Ken Camp has posted a round-up of his favorite categories and companies in the Unified Communications space over 2006. Many thanks for the iotum mention Ken!
Of challenges for 2007, he writes:
For the future, the big issue I see is how our personal information about presence, relevance and context must become part of our digital online identity. Identity management has been a very hot, and to me stalled and boring, topic for quite some time. The carriers, wireline and wireless alike, want to “own” our presence information. I think that’s a problem. I own the information about me and I’ll decide who can or cannot see it. I think in 2007 the industry will grapple with this. The key, as with digitial identity, lies in giving control to users, not to vendors and service providers.
Let’s be clear. The maintainers and aggregators of personal information including but not limited digital identities, whether they’re presence clouds or providers of a service like Plaxo, do so on behalf of the individuals who own that personal information. Like Ken, I see this as an important issue in 2007
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
