Yesterday I spent a day at the CeBIT fair, still the world’s largest IT fair. Besides the many interesting meetings I had previously scheduled, I started thinking about the CeBIT “Leitthema” – their “claim of the year”. This year it has been “Shareconomy”. I still do not know what this term shall mean. There is some fuzzy description at the CeBIT homepage, but in contrast to topics like “Cloud” and “Managing Trust” in 2011 and 2012 respectively, Shareconomy – described as “sharing and using information, resources and experience based on new forms of collaboration” – is a very amorphous concept. They then try to associate it with crowd sourcing, smart infrastructures and smart grids, data security, big data, etc.
In fact, I think that there is something behind this rather strange buzzword. Back in September 2012, KuppingerCole hosted an event about the 4Cs: Communication, Collaboration, Content, and Cloud, which was about enabling new ways of collaboration and communication in a secure way. That probably is what the Shareconomy is all about.
When I look at our advisory business, I see another red-hot topic. In German I’d call it “Umgang mit Dritten”, i.e. how to interact with third parties and services provided by these in a consistent, standardized way. That is about Cloud Security, Identity Federation, API Economy and security therein, etc. Opening up the perimeter and supporting business processes that integrate business partners, customers, etc. is highly important. So maybe that is also part of the Shareconomy. For sure, you will be able to learn a lot about this at our upcoming EIC – the real stuff, not the marketing buzz and fuzz. To highlight just some few sessions:
- Moving to the Cloud to Improve Customer Experience - Lessons Learnt
- People, Process, Product, Partner - the Four P's of IAM/IAG in the Extended Enterprise
- Supporting the Extended Enterprise: Partners, Customers, Mobile Users, and all the Others
- The Future of IAM: Do not kill IAM, improve and extend it