Four degrees of clarification

Last week I watched (and I hope you got to see) one of the greatest comebacks in sports history during the Men’s All-Around Gymnastics competition at the Athens Olympics. American Paul Hamm missed his dismount so badly on the vault that he endangered the judges when he landed, flat on his dignity, in front of them. From leading the competition, he was suddenly thrust into 12th place with only two of six events left. But later he managed to get the two highest marks awarded to any athlete in this competition to eke out first place, the first time in 100 years for an American, by 1/1,000th of a point. Marvelous!

I felt a lot like Paul Hamm last week. Not that I won gold, but I did manage to have a gigantic pratfall! In last week’s newsletter, “Six degrees of separation in identity management”, I mentioned six companies – Courion, Consul Risk Management, HP, MaXware, TruLogica and Critical Path – and managed to mangle the facts about four of them!

When I said that Courion had licensed Consul’s technology for its ComplianceCourier product it so shocked PR dynamo Kelly Murray that she had to be hospitalized. OK, she did go into the hospital but only to have her baby a tad early (I claim no responsibility for that!) but she did take the time to point out that Courion and Consul had a business partnership, not a technological one, to cross-sell each other’s products. Consul Risk Management Chief Technologist Kris Lovejoy confirmed that I apparently misheard her comments. I do apologize to both companies.

I then stated that HP had licensed MaXware’s Identity Center provisioning product. Where that came from, I’m not sure. Re-reading my notes (after both companies contacted me), MaXware Director of Worldwide Marketing Ira Horowitz definitely said that HP was using MaXware’s ExpressSync product as part of its hosted e-mail archiving solution to synchronize a customer’s user accounts in the HP system with those in the customer’s Active Directory system. Again, I apologize to both companies.

At least I managed to spell everyone’s name correctly! Whether I can rise from this to nail the next two events and win the gold as Paul Hamm did is problematic. But, unlike those Olympic hopefuls who have to wait four years for their next attempt at triumph, I get to try a couple of times a week. More chances for success, but more chances to fall on my, eh, dignity. See you next time.