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Horizontal Integration in Knowledge Management can be defined as the distribution of knowledge across diverse business units. A lesson learned captured by the manufacturing group then used by someone in technical support to help solve a problem would be an example of Horizontal Integration. A corporation’s most valuable assets are its workforce and information assets. Horizontal Integration improves the value of both assets by better educating the workforce and improving the usage (i.e. value) of information.

Vertically integrated knowledge management systems, also sometimes referred to a stove piped systems, collect and disseminate information to a specific business unit up and down the chain of command. An example of vertical integration would be a system used by only the sales group that collects information about sales leads and disseminates that information to individuals throughout the chain of command.

The majority of information systems today are more vertically integrated then horizontally integrated. Reasons for this include political, technical, and financial reasons such as:

• Maintaining tighter control of who can view information.
• The system is funded by a specific business unit that does not want to spend the additional resources to disseminate information to different groups.
• Older software typically did not have the ability to easily share data with other systems without significant custom programming.
• Fear of "dirty laundry" being scene by other business sectors.

So what can do you do if you find yourself with KM/Data systems that suffer from poor Horizontal integration? Recent technology advances centered on "Web 2.0" including web service protocols (SOAP, XML-PRC, etc.) and Semantic Web Standards (RDF, RDFS, OWL) make horizontal integration a lot easier. COTS applications and Software Libraries now more frequently support these technologies making implementation easier.

As with any KM system Technology alone will get you no where. A good approach to improve horizontal integration is to first develop scenarios or use cases detailing ways in which information can effectively be utilized between sectors. These scenarios can be used to develop requirements and also make the case to management on why improvements to the infrastructure need to be made. The rest of the development lifecycle should utilize a traditional Systems Engineering Approach however now you have new technologies in your toolbox you can leverage to implement your solution more effectively.