We all live in ecosystems. Just like in biology class, an ecosystem is defined as a community of multiple entities, where each entity relies on another to accomplish its mission, but no single entity is in charge of the process.
The people, places, events, and things you and your organization interface with are all part of your ecosystem. And each person, place, event, or thing in your ecosystem is part of other ecosystems. We are all interconnected in this multi-dimensional web.
Ecosystems have a common mission. For example, public safety, public education, even personal health for each of us relies on the symbiotic relationships which exist between multiple individuals and organizations.
Today, every organization has its own database, which it controls and maintains in order to transact daily tasks. But getting at the information within the database is still a largely manual event. Even in organizations with enterprise-wide data warehouses, the information remains within deep digital silos until extracted by hand.
It’s no longer enough for an organization to claim they are electronic because they have a database and their own internal information sharing processes. The next step is a digital ecosystem, where all participants come together to accomplish the same tasks now done by hand, faster, easier, and more securely.