Cloud-Based Personal Knowledge Management as a service (PKMaaS)

Abstract

This study tries to give a different perspective of the cloud application through a personal knowledge management perspective and its structure in the cloud computing environment. In recent years, there has been a great hype about cloud computing and different books and literature reviews have classified different types of cloud with various definitions and criteria focusing on mainly three different layers of services being infrastructure, platform and software. Instead, this paper provides a meta-observation over an integrated cloud ecosystem through the knowledge window through which a deeper insight into how the cloud, as an ecosystem, provides services that are not feasible in many conventional knowledge management approaches. Adopting a top-down approach, this study tries to illustrate the implications of the cloud at the personal levels from a knowledge-oriented perspective.

Full text

Cloud-Based Personal Knowledge
Management as a service (PKMaaS)
Eric Tsui
Department of Industrial and
Systems Engineering
The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University
eric.tsui@polyu.edu.hk
Rickey K.F. Cheong
UBS AG.
Rcheong852@gmail.com
Farzad Sabetzadeh
Department of Industrial and
Systems engineering
The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University
farzad.sabetzadeh@polyu.edu.hk
Abstract
This study tries to give a different perspective of the
cloud application through a personal knowledge
management perspective and its structure in the cloud
computing environment. In recent years, there has been
a great hype about cloud computing and different books
and literature reviews have classified different types of
cloud with various definitions and criteria focusing on
mainly three different layers of services being
infrastructure, platform and software. Instead, this
paper provides a meta-observation over an integrated
cloud ecosystem through the knowledge window
through which a deeper insight into how the cloud, as
an ecosystem, provides services that are not feasible in
many conventional knowledge management approaches.
Adopting a top-down approach, this study tries to
illustrate the implications of the cloud at the personal
levels from a knowledge-oriented perspective.
Keywords : Cloud, PKM, Collaboration
1. Introduction
In the last 5 years, cloud computing has emerged
from, among others, outsourcing and managed
services, to become an increasingly popular and
viable business concept in the IT and other industries.
Cloud Computing is not a new computational
paradigm; in fact, quite the contrary, cloud
computing represents new business models for
sourcing, composing, and delivering IT and business
services with flexibility and scalability. Up till now,
much of the focus of the cloud, as represented by the
business literature and a handful of academic
publications, is on the provision of infrastructure (aka
Infrastructure-as-a-Service), software platforms (aka
Platform-as-a-Service), and software applications
(aka Software-as-a-Service), together with the
commonly perceived issues and hurdles for
organizations that contemplate of switching to the
cloud. Such issues and challenges include, but not
limited to, multi-vendor management, decision for
private, public or hybrid clouds, standards, security,
data migration, data privacy and regulatory
compliance, and cloud exit strategies. While there are
obvious and compelling needs for these issues and
challenges to be resolved before there is a massive
uptake of the cloud worldwide, the much anticipated
value-add brought about by the cloud especially in
terms of harboring and harnessing knowledge,
fostering extensive and ad hoc collaborations, and
leveraging on various tools for individual and group
learning purposes have been under-explored [4] . The
idea of the Cloud-Based Personal Knowledge
Management (CBPKM) is kind of Knowledge-as-a-
Service (KaaS) model offering a good reason for
individuals to subscribe the cloud computing service.
This paper provides an insight about this new service
layer in the cloud environment and how the cloud can
support personal and group knowledge management
by collaborative tackling of information overload.
2. CLOUD COMPUTING AND THE SERVICE
MODEL
Cloud Computing refers to both the applications
delivered as services over the Internet and the
hardware and systems software in the data centers
that provide those services [1]. Current research and
prevailing discussions on the cloud focus principally
at the operational level but indeed there is much to
gain in exploring how, for example, knowledge cloud
can add value to the DIKW(Data-Information-
Knowledge-Wisdom) hierarchy. These aspects in the
cloud superiority manifest in new found knowledge,
new ways of fostering collaborations and new
learning paradigms.
2.1 Characteristics of Cloud Computing
Malcolm [11] defined 5 characteristics of cloud
computing as below:
1. Dynamic computing infrastructure
This is the Pre-Published Version.

2. IT service-centric approach
3. Self-service based usage model
4. Minimally or self-managed platform
5. Consumption-based billing
From Malcolm’s [11] viewpoints, the service model
for cloud computing requires standardized, scalable,
and secure physical infrastructure which leveraged on
the virtualization technology. This dynamic
computing infrastructure is a critical factor to offer
effective support to the elastic nature of service
provisioning and de-provisioning and while
maintaining high level of reliability and security.
Besides, the usage model also provide compelling
business values to the cloud users e.g. savings on
capital equipment, reduced support cost, and
significantly increased business agility.
Apart from Malcolm, others authors also mentioned
the same benefits for the cloud users, e.g. Armbrust
et al [1] mentioned that cloud computing is
eliminating the up-front commitment by cloud users
and pay for use of computing resource on a short-
term basis as needed; Hofmann and Woods [7]
mentioned that cloud computing removes the
infrastructures and capital expense as a barrier to
entry and allows startups to scale up cheaply and
rapidly; Ryan and Leoffler [14] argued that the basic
point of cloud computing is to avoid acquiring and
maintaining computer equipment and software,
increasing the ease-of-use and flexibility of the
benefit offered by the technology.
3. PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT
The idea of the cloud based personal knowledge
management platform is leveraging the benefits of
cloud computing to interconnect individuals together
to better manage and share their knowledge. It is not
a single application but a collection of tools running
in the cloud.
3.1 What is personal knowledge management?
Several scholars have articulated what is personal
knowledge management e.g. Frand and Hixon [5],
Avery et al. [1], Higgison [6], Jefferson [10], Volkel
and Abecker [15], Martin [12] and Harold Jarche [8].
The followings are the extracts of the related
literature by different scholars which provides insight
of the definition and nature of personal knowledge
management.
(1) Frand and Hixon [5]
Personal Knowledge Management is a system
designed by individuals for their own personal use [5]
and “it is a conceptual framework to organise and
integrate information that we, as individuals, feel is
important so that it becomes part of our personal
knowledge base. It provides a strategy for
transforming what might be random pieces of
information into something that can be systematically
applied and that expands our personal knowledge.”
(2) Avery et al. [1]
Avery et al.[1] argued that “PKM assumes that
individuals have developed a self-awareness of their
limits and abilities, i.e. what they know and what they
can do. This personal self-awareness is an
understanding of how much they know, how to access
the things they know, strategies for acquiring new
knowledge and strategies for accessing new
information as needed. In the vast amount of
information available and many means for acquiring
new information, individuals have each mapped out
their own areas of expertise and their own methods
for additional learning.”
(3) Higgsion [6]
Higgison [6] defined personal knowledge
management as “managing and supporting personal
knowledge and information so that it is accessible,
meaningful and valuable to the individual;
maintaining networks, contacts and communities;
making life easier and more enjoyable, and
exploiting personal capital”
(4) Jefferson [10]
Jefferson [10] argued that “PKM is focused on
bottom up approach, with an individual perspective
to KM. The goal is to allow individuals to choose
what information to collect, how to structure it, and
who to share it with. Individuals need to be able to
manage their own information so that is meaningful,
accessible when it needed, can be easily exploited.
PKM allows workers to organise both digital and
paper content in such a way to allow them to make
sense of the deluge they are continually exposed to.”
(5) Volkel and Abecker [15]
Volkel and Abecker [15] termed “Personal
Knowledge Management to denote the process of the
individuals to manage knowledge” and “PKM deals
with embrained, embodied and encoded knowledge
i.e. mostly with personal, self-authored artefacts.”
(6) Jerome Martin [12]
Martin (2008) argued that “PKM is knowing what
knowledge we have and how we can organise it,
mobilise it and use it to accomplish our goal, and
how we can continue to create knowledge.”

(7) Harold Jarche [8]
Jarche [8] mentioned that “PKM is an individual,
disciplined process by which we make sense of
information, observations and ideas. In the past it
may have been keeping a journal, writing letters or
having conversations. These are still valid, but with
digital media we can add context by categorising,
commenting or even remixing it. We can also store
digital media for easy retrieval”
Irrespective of how personal knowledge management
is defined by different scholars, Cheong and Tsui [3]
argued that the key purpose of personal knowledge
management is to provide a framework for
individuals to manage new information, integrate it
and enrich each individual knowledge database in an
effective manner; doing this successfully will
empower each individual to easily apply their own
personal knowledge to deal with new and old
problems, to learn from new experience and to create
new knowledge; and it is a continuous and
interactive process which is not independent of other
knowledge management.
A PKM model is developed by Cheong & Tsui [3]
based on the literature review and also the results of a
global survey about the roles and values of the PKM.
There are four core components in this model,
namely Personal Information Management (PIM),
Personal Knowledge Internalisation (PKI), Personal
Wisdom Creation (PCW) and Inter-Personal
Knowledge Transferring (IKT). The interaction
action of the components is illustrated in Fig. 1 and
Fig. 2 which illustrate the required skill/competence,
the layer of the DIKW transformation, the inherent
knowledge conversion and the involved KM process.
Figure 2 : PKM model
4. CLOUD BASED PERSONAL
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (CBPKM)
PLATFORM
PKM requires an environment to facilitate Personal
Information Management, Personal Knowledge
Internalization, Personal Wisdom Creation and Inter-
personal Knowledge Transferring, such environment
is known as personal learning environment (PLE).
The PLE should accessible at anytime and anywhere,
and independent to the client platform or devices i.e.
no matter the user is using mobile phone or Mac or
Window desktop…etc. The nature of cloud
computing is just perfectly fit for this requirement, all
information is process at cloud not at client end and
user can access to the service anytime and anywhere
when there is a connection to the internet no matter
via the mobile network or internet access.
The following features of CBPKM can be viewed as
Knowledge-as-a-Service (KaaS) which form a PLE
by leveraging the cloud computing benefits e.g. usage
model, scalability, sustainability…etc.
4.1 Knowledge-as-a-Service (KaaS)
The idea of the CBPKM tools is to enable the cloud
users to better manage the PIM, PIK and IKT of the
PKM model described in this paper. The PWC is not
included in the CBPKM toolset, as personal wisdom
creation is the results of the PIM, PIK and IKT, and
also it requires users’ effort in real life situation,
which is hardly replaced by a software tools.
The features of the CBPKM should allow mobility
and portability, i.e. the cloud user can access at
anytime and anywhere. Besides, the platform should
allow cloud user to better manage their personal
knowledge, e.g. information retrieving, evaluating
and organising. CBPKM should able to facilitate
information analysis, cloud users to learn and
develop their knowledge, and reflection of their
knowledge.
One of the sample applications in CBPKM platform
is search engine which provides cloud users to search
and retrieve necessary information anytime and
anywhere, provided an Internet connection is
available no matter it is via the mobile or fixed
Internet network.
Figure 1 : PKM model – Integrated view

The challenge for the KaaS provider is that the
features of search engine become more sophisticated.
More intelligent is required and not just search the
textual contexts or locate the reverent portion in a
audio and video clips. KaaS should be able to advise
the information about the relevancy and the
trustworthiness of the searched information, which
will enable the users to evaluate if the information is
useful and meet their search purpose or not. It should
also be able to provide e.g. expert opinions about the
searched information, and the cloud user should be
able to access the expert for further consultation
when necessary as a paid service. KaaS in this case
should line up the cloud experts together in different
knowledge domains and the revenue would potential
come from the subscription of both the cloud users
and cloud experts.
For the information or knowledge organizing, KaaS
can provide a cloud-based knowledge repository. It is
not just a storage space for the cloud users to keep the
information. It should enable the cloud user to
internalize their personal knowledge. As such it
should be an indexed knowledge repository system to
handle both structured and unstructured information,
allow pattern matching for lesson-learnt, and able to
build a narrative repository. This knowledge
repository can be a private repository for the cloud
users or a public repository available to all
subscribers. The scalability of cloud computing does
helping the service provider to handle e.g. the storage
requirement for individual users as the private
repository should allow portability which may impact
to the service provider to change the storage demand
at any time.
In short, CBPKM is a platform of knowledge as a
service (KaaS), it is not merely providing an
application,
Conclusion
Due to scalability and ubiquity of the cloud,
traditional enterprise applications can now be used by
far more users that they were originally anticipated
and additional resources can be allocated to support
(authorized) computational intensive applications
whenever the need arises. These two characteristics
have offered new ways of working for knowledge
workers operating with cloud-based enterprise
applications These new ways of working often do not
just manifest in the change in work style or processes
but new found and valuable knowledge can be
generated and in some cases fused with enterprise
applications thereby realizing the concept of
embedding knowledge into business processes.
This paper highlighted a conceptual service of Cloud
Computing for Personal Knowledge Management
and future research is required. The idea of CBPKM
is a Knowledge-as-a-Service platform (KaaS) which
is beyond the SaaS. The features of CBPKM
described in this paper is just to stimulate the service
providers in designing their future KaaS platform
which will require in-depth research in the aspects of
both technical and commercial.
References
[1] Armbrust, M, Fox, A, Griffith, R, Joseph, AD, Katz, R,
Konwinski, A, Lee, G, Patterson, D, Rabkin, A, Stoica, I &
Zaharia, M 2009, Above the Clouds: A Berkely View of Cloud
Computing.
[2] Avery, S, Brooks, R, Brown, J, Dorsey, P & O'Conner, M
2001, 'Personal Knowledge Management: Framework for
Integration and Partnerships', paper presented to Annual
Conference of the Association of Small Computer Users in
Education (ASCUE), Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 10-14
June 2001.
[3] Cheong, KFR & Tsui, E 2010, 'The Roles and Values of
Personal Knowledge Management: An exploratory study',
VINE: The journal of information and knowledge
management systems, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 204-27.
[4] Delic, K.A & Riley, J.F., (2010), “ Enterprise Knowledge
Clouds : Architecture and Technologies”, Handbook of
Cloud Computing, Springer, NY, 239-254
[5] Frand, J & Hixon, C 1999, Personal Knowledge Management:
Who, What, Why, When, Where, How?, viewed January 18
2008 2008,
<http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand/researche
r/speeches/PKM.htm>.
[6] Higgison, S 2004, 'Your say: Personal Knowledge
Management', Inside Knowledge, vol. 7, no. 7.
[7] Hofmann, P & Woods, D 2010, 'Cloud Computing: The
limits of Public Clouds for Business Applications', IEEE
Internet Computing, vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 90-4.
[8] Jarche, H 2010, Personal Knowledge Management, Jarche
Consulting, viewed March 26 2010 2010,
<http://www.jarche.com/2010/01/pkm-in-2010/>.
[9] Jarke, M., Jeusfeld, M., Quix, C., & Vassiliadis, P. (1998).
Architecture and quality in data warehouses. (pp. 93-113)
[10] Jefferson, TL 2006, 'Taking it personally: personal
knowledge management', VINE: The journal of information
and knowledge management systems, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 35-
37.
[11] Malcolm, D 2009, The five defining charateristics of cloud
computing, ZDNet, viewed Dec 10 2010 2010,
<http://www.zdnet.com/news/the-five-defining-
characteristics-of-cloud-computing/287001>.
[12] Martin, J 2008, Personal Knowledge Management: The basis
of Corporate and Institiutional Knowledge Management,
Spotted Cow Alberta, September 18 2008,
<http://www.spottedcowpress.ca/KnowledgeManagement/pd
fs/06MartinJ.pdf>.
[13] Mell, P & Grance, T 2009, The NIST Definition of Cloud
Computing, National Institute of Standards and Technology,
Information Technology Laboratory, Dec 10 2010,
<http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/clouddef-
v15.doc .>.
[14] Ryan, WM & Leoffler, CM 2010, 'Insights into Cloud
Computing', Intellectural Property & Technology Law
Journal, vol. 22, no. 11, pp. 22-7.
[15] Volkel, M & Abecker, A 2008, Cost-Benefit Analysis for the
design of Personal Knowledge Management Systems.