Customer interaction hubs is the term Gartner coined (and now Forrester and others are using) to describe the integration of every customer interaction system under a single, unified strategy and vision. I wrote about customer interaction hubs, or CIHs, in a Connect Magazine column earlier this year. I think they define an important next step in enterprise systems.

A recent article in CRM Daily, asks if the customer interaction hub is within reach. One thing I've believed for some time, and the article points this out as well, is that a CIH is not something you buy from a vendor, it follows from a strategy and results from integrating myriad systems into an infrastructure that flexibly meets business needs. Interestingly, that same sentence is something I've said about digital identity infrastructures. Furthermore, I think the methods that are used to create digital identity infrastructures are the same ones you need to create a CIH inside of your company. The real winners in the CIH space won't be product vendors (although they'll do alright), it will be the systems integration companies that help companies create and execute a CIH vision.