UnboundID, a startup that makes identity management software used by both large cloud providers and telecommunications firms, has raised a $ 12.5 million Series B round led by Open View Venture Partners. The startup is noteworthy because it is after the holy grail of computing today — allowing people and businesses to manage and trade on their identity across professional and social networks in a simple way.
Unfortunately for Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Facebook, who apparently thinks that folks with “integrity” should have just one ID, most people are more complicated and insist on having multiple identities both online and off. Unbound ID, based in Austin, Texas, recognizes this, and proposes software that can sift through multiple identifying data and share only the data that companies or consumers want shared. In the binary world of computing, creating software to handle the fluidity of human behaviors and demands is hard, so if Unbound ID can manage it, a company like IBM, HP or a telco with a data strategy might be happy to snap it up.
For an overview of the company’s goals, check out my chat with CEO Steve Schoaff from back in January 2011.
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According to the most recent release, the company has hopped onto the “big data” bandwagon — referring to the act of managing ID as a bid data problem, but for the most part its strategy looks to be the same. That’s good, because it’s a hard problem, and solving it should make someone a lot of money.
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