* Chris Stone named president and CEO of StreamServe
Back in November, I mused over Chris Stone’s departure from Novell (see link below) and since then many have asked me what Stone might be up to. At last month’s BrainShare conference, I did run into some folks who had been in contact with Stone and all agreed that he was biding his time and relaxing before jumping back into the fray.
Well, last week he jumped back in.
StreamServe (http://www.streamserve.com) announced that Stone was joining the company as president and CEO replacing co-founder Hans Otterling, who becomes vice-chairman.
The 10-year-old company is involved in the area of improving business communication and document exchange. While, for most of us, Adobe Acrobat’s PDF files are good enough to distribute documents while preserving their “look and feel,” in some areas that’s not quite enough. According to the Boston Business Journal (https://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2005/04/04/daily2.html): “Burlington-based StreamServe’s software allows users to create interactive, personalized documents from information stored in enterprise planning software and other applications. StreamServe products have the ability to translate documents to various languages and currencies; import information and graphics from other corporate applications; keep track of those who view or alter them; and other features.”
Since Stone was a major advocate of identity-based computing while at Novell (both times), it could be anticipated that identity and access management may soon play a bigger role in StreamServe’s products, as well, perhaps, in the open source community – another area Stone has strong feelings about.
Stone has an engaging personality and a strong stage presence – two things sorely missing during the general sessions at the recently concluded BrainShare. Just as he relentlessly traveled the world beating the drum for Novell’s open source and identity-based technologies so too can we expect him to bring interactive business communications into the spotlight. Whether or not the platform StreamServe offers for Stone’s talents is large enough only time will tell.
As CEO of Burlington, Mass., StreamServe, Stone is sure to be involved in Boston area business and technology forums with local area CEOs, such as Novell’s own Jack Messman in Waltham, Mass. Those could be interesting meetings.
