The Great Communication Loop

In my inbox this morning came an interesting article on eWeek regarding Microsoft's announcement of unified communication software. I thought a couple of points in Bill Gates speech were particularly interesting:

"A new wave of software-driven innovations will eliminate the boundaries between the various modes of communications we use throughout the day. Soon, you'll have a single identity that spans all of the ways people can reach you, and you'll be able to move a conversation seamlessly between voice, text and video and from one device to another as your location and information-sharing needs change," he said.

It’s very clear that need is there, our corporate cultures are moving beyond national borders with employees, vendors, partners, customers spread all across the globe. We’ve seen how new technologies over the past ten years have broadened the reach of companies beyond anything they would have considered possible. Now the problems they face is how to keep up with that internal demand to keep all these connected parties entwined for greater productivity and efficiency:

These workers are accustomed to forming ad hoc virtual communities and to collecting and storing information online, want tools that facilitate the creation of virtual workgroups, and look to team Web sites, wikis and other digital ways of creating and sharing information, he said.

This is at the heart of Portal and Enterprise 2.0 efforts.