Extensive coverage was made of Raven at the Lotusphere I attended this past January in Orlando. The technology has matured since that time, and Lotus now has a beta program for testing. Lotus is making a big fuss about Raven, so let's take a look at this new software and see how it can help computing enterprises get a handle on their resources.

What is it?
Knowledge management was one of the many buzzwords to hit the industry last year. The newest buzzword is portal, and that is where Raven enters the picture. Before moving on, it would be a good idea to take a look at both these terms.

Knowledge management
Knowledge is not housed in the organization itself. On the contrary, it resides within the people who make up the organization. Knowledge management focuses on ways of sharing and storing the knowledge of individuals, as a means of improving the competency, speed, and efficiency--not to mention profitability--of the larger whole.

Portal
A portal provides an entry point for individuals and organizations when they wish to access something. For example, many enterprises provide an intranet portal that allows users to access all its internal resources. There are many popular Internet portals as well, such as Netscape's NetCenter and Yahoo. These Web sites attempt to provide one location for surfing the Internet. In short, a portal is a window into an intranet and/or the Internet.

Raven combines knowledge management with the idea of a portal. It allows end users and communities to discover information and applications on a particular subject. It also facilitates the sharing of information and applications in organizations both small and large. This makes it beneficial to both the enterprise as a whole and the individual departments.

Three tools
According to Lotus, Raven utilizes three tools. They are a Knowledge Portal, a Discovery Engine, and Application Templates. We'll take a closer look at each of them.

Knowledge Portal
Portals can be created on a user, community, or enterprise basis. The Knowledge Portal groups information by community, interest, or task. It organizes your information, applications, and contacts by community, task, interest, or job concentration. Your personal portal gives you a one-stop-shop for all your working needs. It can access and monitor your mail, individual applications, and so forth.