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Box 6.2
An example: Sun Microsystems (now part of Oracle Systems)

In 1997, Sun Microsystems launched SunWEB, (Monasco 2005 an intranet linking its
employees worldwide. The intranet has not only saved $25 million a year but has also
helped achieve big savings by enhancing its relationships with customers and suppliers
by putting knowledge online. Sun also began thinking about how to use this powerful
network to enhance the knowledge, skills, and capabilities of its employees and partners.
SunTAN is their intranet-based knowledge and training system, an interactive, network-
based curriculum management and sales support system. SUN has tremendous learning
and knowledge needs: 90 percent of its revenues are from products that are less than a
year old and it has consistently experienced widening product lines and shorter life cycles.
As a result, the company found it could not train its sales professionals fast or effectively
enough. It could no longer rely on traditional classroom-based training, which was too
long, overwhelmed people with information, and cost about $2,225 a week per individual
(not counting lost sales time).
SunTAN consolidates sales training information, sales support resources, product
updates and materials, competitive intelligence, and an array of other content on the Sun
intranet. This distributed learning architecture ensures the richest, most bandwidth-
intensive, and most actively used media (e.g., a video demonstrating the latest line of new
server products) is distributed to and stored on local servers at regional sales offi ces rather
than the company ’ s headquarters. Users can then download them at their convenience.
In the new world of distance training, you no longer need to retain knowledge. The only
knowledge you need to retain is knowledge of the location of where you can get the
information you need. It changes so often that it no longer makes sense to retain it. It is
a pull rather than a push model. It is critical that funding for this comes from business
units and that content also comes from resources other than a centralized training group.
In this way, SunTAN acts a just-in-time knowledge or performance support system enabling
sales personnel to rapidly access critical information while they have a customer on the
phone. Moreover, they can train in self-directed way at their desktops without abandoning
their customers for a weeklong training course.
SunTAN was originally developed for Sun ’ s direct sales reps and sales engineers, but it is
now available to the company ’ s twenty thousand resellers who account for more than 60
percent of worldwide sales. Additional features that will be integrated in this environment
include database technology to track and profi le individual usage of the system. This will be
used to create customized learning paths and alert employees when relevant resources
become available. A collaborative product called Kansas will be integrated into this environ-
ment to allow users to pull in as many as nine different video feeds onto a single screen for
a high-tech meeting or panel discussion. Another add-on technology will be a conceptual
indexer that will allow users to search and retrieve video content with keywords much in
the same way that they now search text. Some SUN customers are requesting that SunTAN ’ s
training content be made available within their own intranet fi rewalls. The SunTan system
remains an excellent example of a knowledge management application.