Knowledge workers can be any of the following:
Managers who review data to make corporate decisions
Analysts who create detailed reports of the health of the corporation
Workers who take orders and assist the customer in choosing a product
Workers who create documents that contain information valuable to the corporation, such as project design documents, project schedules, and e-mail documents
To be able to do their jobs, these knowledge workers will need to access the vast quantity of information stored on the computers inside and outside the corporation. For the most part, this information will be accessed by workers through the intranet or Internet, creating a Web workstyle. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, we will see a major revolution: corporations will build DNS's to overcome the challenges of managing, sharing, and using information important to the knowledge worker.
Goals of a DNS
Let's take a more detailed look at the DNS itself. The primary goal of the DNS is to provide business-critical information to the right place at the right time. To accomplish this, the DNS will have to perform the following tasks:
Provide scalability
Enable creation of Microsoft Windows Distributed interNet Application Architecture (DNA) systems
Facilitate Internet use
Create corporate memory
Eliminate paper forms
Allow self-service applications, which will enable users to perform tasks independently
Capture customer feedback
Provide business partner communication
Respond to crises
All of these topics will be discussed in detail in the sections that follow.