Tom Baldwin points to a ZDNet UK news item by Ina Fried, suggesting a Microsoft entree to knowledge management software: Microsoft search wants to pick your brain:
Chairman Bill Gates is to show off server software that aims to help workers find data stored on their company's computers as well as information located only inside the brains of their colleagues
Specifically, the article talks about a new component for SharePoint that will build expertise profiles of employees, based on email and other electronic traces of expertise. And the technology will help people make connections to the experts in question.
From the brief description in the article, it sounds as if Microsoft may give some pains to the companies who already do this kind of thing by diving into email logs and other content attached to user names.
That Microsoft are making this kind of technology part of their standard offerings says a lot about the importance companies see in learning about who-knows-what and providing that information back to the employees of the company.