ClouNS - A Cloud-native Application Reference Model for Enterprise Architects

The capability to operate cloud-native applications can generate enormous business growth and value. But enterprise architects should be aware that cloud-native applications are vulnerable to vendor lock-in. We investigated cloud-native application design principles, public cloud service providers, and industrial cloud standards. All results indicate that most cloud service categories seem to foster vendor lock-in situations which might be especially problematic for enterprise architectures. This might sound disillusioning at first. However, we present a reference model for cloud-native applications that relies only on a small subset of well standardized IaaS services. The reference model can be used for codifying cloud technologies. It can guide technology identification, classification, adoption, research and development processes for cloud-native application and for vendor lock-in aware enterprise architecture engineering methodologies

Supporting Knowledge Management Instruments with Composable Micro-Services

Despite the fact that knowledge management (KM) challenges cannot be solved by installing a technical system alone, technical support for KM initiatives is still an important issue and nowadays requires handling of context, intelligent content analysis and extended collaboration support. Since information systems have significantly improved in the last ten years with regards to implementing Web 2.0 features and semantic content analysis, knowledge workers can expect better support from IT than ever. After the human-oriented, technology-oriented (documents), process-riented and social KM phases, KM support now needs integration of those beneficial technologies instead of hyping one and neglecting the other. The true nature and potential of social media does only manifest when people incorporate them into their day-to-day work routines or even "live" the social media idea. The same is true for business process management (BPM). If BPM tools are not integrated into the existing, well-known information systems, acceptance will be low. Practice shows, that employees often do not even know in which process they are currently working

Evaluation of medium-large Language Models at zero-shot closed book generative question answering

Large language models (LLMs) have garnered significant attention, but the definition of "large" lacks clarity. This paper focuses on medium-sized language models (MLMs), defined as having at least six billion parameters but less than 100 billion. The study evaluates MLMs regarding zero-shot generative question answering, which requires models to provide elaborate answers without external document retrieval. The paper introduces an own test dataset and presents results from human evaluation. Results show that combining the best answers from different MLMs yielded an overall correct answer rate of 82.7% which is better than the 60.9% of ChatGPT. The best MLM achieved 71.8% and has 33B parameters, which highlights the importance of using appropriate training data for fine-tuning rather than solely relying on the number of parameters. More fine-grained feedback should be used to further improve the quality of answers. The open source community is quickly closing the gap to the best commercial models

Gathering Knowledge from Social Knowledge Management Environments: Validation of an Anticipatory Standard

Knowledge management is more and more happening in social environments, supported by social software. This directly changes the way knowledge workers interact and the way information and communication technology is used. Recent studies, striving to provide a more appropriate support for knowledge work, face challenges when eliciting knowledge from user activities and maintaining its situatedness in context. Corresponding solutions in such social environments are not interoperable due to a lack of appropriate standards. To bridge this gap, we propose and validate a first specification of an anticipatory standard in this field. We illustrate its application and utility analyzing three scenarios. As main result we analyze the lessons learned and provide insights into further research and development of our approach. By that we reach out to stimulate discussion and raise support for this initiative towards establishing standards in the domain of knowledge management

Social Knowledge Environments

Knowledge management represents a key issue for both information systems’ academics and practitioners, including those who have become disillusioned by actual results that fail to deliver on exaggerated promises and idealistic visions. Social software, a tremendous global success story, has prompted similarly high expectations regarding the ways in which organizations can improve their knowledge handling. But can these expectations be met, whether in academic research or the real world? This article seeks to identify current research trends and gaps, with a focus on social knowledge environments. The proposed research agenda features four focal challenges: semi-permeable organizations, social software in professional work settings, crowd knowledge, and crossborder knowledge management. Three solutions emerge as likely methods to address these challenges: designoriented solutions, analytical solutions, and interdisciplinary dialogue

Manifesto for a Standard on Meaningful Representations of Knowledge in Social Knowledge Management Environments

Knowledge Management (KM) is a social activity. More and more organizations use social software as a tool to bridge the gap between technology- and human-oriented KM. In order to create interoperable, transferable solutions, it is necessary to utilize standards. In this paper, we analyze which standards can be applied and which gaps currently exist. We present the concept of knowledge bundles, capturing information on knowledge objects, activities and people as a prerequisite for social-focused KM. Based on our concept and examples, we derive the strong need for standardization in this domain. As a manifesto this paper tries to stimulate discussion and to enable a broad initiative working towards a common standard for the next generation of knowledge management systems. Our manifesto provides with eight recommendations how the KM community should act to address future challenges

Supporting Knowledge Management Instruments with Composable Micro-Services

Despite the fact that knowledge management (KM) challenges cannot be solved by installing a technical system alone, technical support for KM initiatives is still an important issue and nowadays requires handling of context, intelligent content analysis and extended collaboration support. Since information systems have significantly improved in the last ten years with regards to implementing Web 2.0 features and semantic content analysis, knowledge workers can expect better support from IT than ever. After the human-oriented, technology-oriented (documents), process-riented and social KM phases, KM support now needs integration of those beneficial technologies instead of hyping one and neglecting the other. The true nature and potential of social media does only manifest when people incorporate them into their day-to-day work routines or even "live" the social media idea. The same is true for business process management (BPM). If BPM tools are not integrated into the existing, well-known information systems, acceptance will be low. Practice shows, that employees often do not even know in which process they are currently working