The knowledge management Research studies in the age of cloud computing

Cloud processing provide services based on gradual price structure for essential software and hardware services (e.g., applications, storage, processing power, virtual server) in web media (e.g., cloud). As a result of scalability and eliminating the need for large investments in expensive hardware and software licenses, and offering benefits, it offers significant costs to organizations. Continuous software and hardware upgrades have become commonplace (and expensive) in many organizations. This situation is likely to worsen in the current economic situation after the imminent collapse of the world's financial systems. Cloud computing can provide the opportunity for many of these organizations to continue to take advantage of new developments in IT technologies at affordable cost. Different organizations in the world are increasingly dynamic. A major part of this situation is the result of developments and innovations in technology, particularly Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The objective of the present study is to investigate knowledge management initiatives in the cloud processing era to identify the current situation as well as future research. Different dimensions such as objectives, different types of knowledge and technologies will be investigated.

After mapping studies at 4 databases of IEEE, AMC digital library, SpringerLink, and Science Direct, 9 articles were identified about knowledge management initiatives at the cloud processing era and in order to extract the related information, they were investigated within a set of questions. Although only a few studies were found that indicated knowledge management initiatives at the cloud processing era, studies show increasing interest in this topic in recent years. From the perspective of knowledge management, most of studies on the dimensions related to presenting cloud issues and new web-based software for knowledge management discuss the utilization of knowledge management system.

The results show that knowledge management is an important strategy to increase effectiveness, promote choices, and use suitable techniques and methods in cloud issues. On the other hand, inadequacy of the existing knowledge management systems is referred as the biggest problem related to knowledge management implementation in the era of cloud processing.

In this paper, a systematic mapping of knowledge management in cloud computing was provided. Nine research questions were defined and examined the following aspects. 1) Distribution of selected studies throughout the year; 2) Research focus from the perspective of cloud processing; 3) Research focus from the perspective of knowledge management; 4) Type of research; 5) Reported problems; 6) Objectives of applying knowledge management in cloud processing; 7) Types of knowledge commonly managed in background of cloud processing; 8) Information technology used in knowledge management in cloud processing; and 9) Main conclusion (advantages and problems) reported in the implementation of knowledge management. Knowledge management in cloud processing has been shown to be a very committed and promising field of research. Knowledge management helps to examine knowledge in the organization in different ways, as shown by this systematic mapping. The main part of this work is to reveal some aspects related to the application of knowledge management in cloud processing for future research in this field.