One of the world's largest industrial gas suppliers has deployed a 'Wiki' solution to leverage the knowledge across its businesses. The BOC Group has selected Sirius Corporation, the UK's leading Open Source specialist, to provide expert technical support for MediaWiki.
The BOC Group required a knowledge capture tool, available to all users, to be able to share information easily and gain immediate feedback. MediaWiki provides this kind of functionality.
John Hobday, Knowledge Manager, The BOC Group said: “The 'Wiki' approach has improved collaboration amongst geographically
dispersed groups within BOC. In fact it's been so well received that it's becoming an integral part of our knowledge capture and transfer processes for outsourcing and in-sourcing.
Mike Boyle, Director of Information Management Strategy, The BOC Group explained: “My department trailed a number of Wiki engines and the most comfortable fit was MediaWiki. It provides a simple user interface for both contributing and tracking information. Its global popularity also helps to ensure an extensive support and development infrastructure.”
Joann Butler, Technology Strategy Consultant, The BOC Group said: “MediaWiki is written in PHP and MySQL. This is a relatively new technology for BOC and neither is currently part of BOC's approved technology architecture and therefore not supported by our delivery organisation. Sirius Corporation are providing us with PHP and MySQL support, which has assisted us to bring the BOC Wiki into production.”
Mark Taylor, CEO at Sirius Corporation said: “We are delighted to be working with The BOC Group. By rolling out MediaWiki they will be helping to decentralise the all-important knowledge that drives their business. MediaWiki is Open Source so there are no annual or per user license fees to pay. When you've got 14,000 potential users, you can imagine how cost effective that is!”
MediaWiki is a web-based Open Source application that allows users to add and edit content easily and is especially suited for rapid publication and constructive collaborative authoring. It was developed to serve the needs of Wikipedia, the internet encyclopedia, but has since become one of the most popular Wiki solutions. Its ease of use, low cost of ownership, and ability to customise its source code has driven growing interest amongst information management professionals. MediaWiki runs on Open Source web technologies such as Apache, PHP and MySQL and can be hosted on Windows, Mac OSX, Linux or Solaris servers.
For more information about MediaWiki visit: www.mediawiki.org
Serving two million customers in more than 50 countries, The BOC Group is one of the largest and most global of the world’s leading gases companies. It employs around 30,000 people and had annual sales of just over £4.6 billion in 2005.
For more information visit about The BOC Group: www.boc.com .
Sirius Corporation is a leading European IT services group specialising in enterprise-ready Open Source software including databases, email systems, file & print, directory services, and cross-platform authentication. Client's include blue-chip multi-nationals and public sector organisations.
For more information visit: www.siriusopensource.com.
