Daños forestales

The next decade will see a tremendous growth of sensors in low-cost and high-cost products, like toys, appliances, cars, and homes. Sensors can fi ne tune the behavior of any product by adapting it to the changing conditions of the environment.

Sensors with multiple sensing capabilities will provide a more fl exible detection of environmental parameters. A variety of powering mechanisms are appearing, from biological ones (sugar powered), for body implants to scav- enging environment sources (like using vibration or heat gradients). A third, and fundamental one, is the capability of sensors to communicate through wireless. In parallel, we are seeing two other major areas of evolution: the capability to retrieve information from sensors (a subset of the “sensor” family is all kinds of identifi cation devices, RFID, optical tags, two-dimensional tags, DNA tags, etc.) through cell phones and other hand-held devices; and the capability to analyze data captured by million of sensors to derive higher- level information. Temperature sensors in cell phones, as an example, may be exploited to check the temperature of a population of hundreds of million of people several times a day, thus allowing the identifi cation of anomalies that may herald the beginning of an avian fl u epidemic.

These evolutions will impact all ways of life and all production, delivery, and customer care value chains and processes. Enterprises will be able to both micromanage and macromanage their business. Additionally, products may become gateways to sensors’ information and can share that information with the environment or via a mediating management system. This possibility creates new business opportunities for an enterprise; this in turn, requires the adoption of new management paradigms and an upgrade of present management systems.

SOA and SDK are the enabling components of this new production, delivery, and cooperative environment. SOA can use both a loosely coupled paradigm (Web service-based) fi tting an open environment supporting a variety of loosely interconnected enterprises and a tightly coupled paradigm fi tting those services having low-latency requirements. This usually requires explicit agree- ments and is managed within the enterprise or among enterprises through con- tractual obligations. The SOA approach supports the new Brokering model that is pivotal in the seeding of an ecosystem. Within the SOA paradigm, other non-SOA paradigms may also exist, such as IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), for specifi c management within the enterprise.

SOA makes possible the offering and access by third parties, enterprises thriving in that ecosystem, in particular, service enablers in the areas of identity management, localization, charging, profi ling, presence, messaging, and call control.

A number of major enterprises, such as Telecom Italia, have already adopted these approaches to provide the fabric for other enterprises to develop their offers.

Enterprises, particularly small and medium ones, are exposed to these evolutions in terms of components that they use in their production process and in their prod- ucts. The availability of cheaper, more powerful components allows them to perform better and improve their portfolio.

Sometimes, however, evolution is not captured internally, rather it is happening beyond the enterprise horizon and as such it seems to be alien to its business. In a world that is getting more and more connected, where distribution chains effi ciency is shrinking distances and makes market spaces overlapping, this is often no longer the case. Alien evolutions may bring most threats; they can also be wonderful oppor- tunities to enter new market spaces. For example, the iPod can be seen as a platform that has created an ecosystem exploiting iTunes with a variety of players developing adds-on both software and hardware and new communications paradigms such as the Podcast.

The concept of vertical silos and of walled gardens is disappearing, as illustrated by mash ups (Web applications that combine data from several sources to offer a single tool) as a new form of loose communications and relationships within an eco- system. New IT architectures open up the internals of the enterprise processes and management systems to the ecosystem through Service Development Kit (SDK), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web2.0, and so on (see the box “Data Capture Technology Evolution: Looming Disruptions”).

Connectivity dramatically increases interactions among systems that used to be separate. A telephone can become a TV since it has (or can have) a display. The TV can be connected to a telephone line providing telephone functions. Telephone and TV may interact. A video call received on a cell phone can be routed so that the video signal can be projected on the larger screen. The telephone terminal and the TV set are aware of each other and can communicate seamlessly to manage services. Yet, the telephone and TV do not converge but coexist in the ever more complex ecosystem of the home environment. The two “species” enter into a symbiotic rela- tionship increasing their value in the eyes of the user.

The concept of an ecosystem in relation to living things and to natural resources is now much better understood in terms of interactions that can be modeled in math- ematical terms using the small world theory (see the box “Small Worlds”). At the level of an ecosystem, we rarely speak of convergence and mostly of competition and this can lead to the disappearance of a species or to symbiosis where the interaction between two species increases their respective value (it increases the fi tness within the environment and the chance to reproduce successfully). Competition and sym- biosis transform the ecosystem. There are evolutions that can lead to an overall increase of value, which are able to generate diversity and to exploit resources better, and there are those that change the balance in the ecosystem by favoring a species. Competition can increase the overall value only if it encourages a more effi cient management of resources through a new level of stability, not when one species over- whelms the others. In this case the overall value does not change. This reasoning applies to both bio-ecosystems and economic ecosystems.

Consider, for example, the home ecosystem. In this we can locate species such as “satellite television,” “digital terrestrial television,” “analogue broadcast television” as well as a video cassette rented from Blockbuster, a DVD packaged with a magazine

or bought on-line. To these species, we can now add the “IPTV,” thanks to technologi- cal evolution and in some cases to new regulations.

Here, as in any other ecosystem, we know that a dynamic equilibrium has to be maintained. If the IPTV, as a new species, succeeds in prevailing over the other spe- cies, we can say that the overall value of the ecosystem would not have changed much. The gain of IPTV is at the expense of some other species, but the ecosystem as a whole is not gaining any value and may actually be losing some. An IPTV that offers the same content available through satellite and the same movies available through rental stores is challenging these species but lowers the overall value. In a competitive environment, the shift of value among competing value chains converg- ing on the same user with the same kind of product or service quickly transfers the gain to that end client. Yet, many of the current advertisements for IPTV focus on the savings offered compared with the alternative channels.

On the contrary, let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that IPTV does not compete with the other species in the ecosystem (or that this competition is limited to a sharing of the attention of viewers that may overall increase at the expense of some other ecosystems) but rather that it establishes a symbiotic relation with the other species. In this case, the ecosystem “home entertainment” increases its species variety, and therefore increases its value at the expense of other ecosystems (people enjoy more entertainment at home and go less to see movies at cinema).

What does the symbiosis of the IPTV species with other species mean? The main implication is that what it offers is in harmony with the ecosystem, without encroach- ing on the vital space of the other species. IPTV would then be a creator of value when it is offered (successfully) at a price that is higher than the sum of its compo- nents; otherwise, this clearly leads to a loss of overall value.

Rather than trying to compete with the other “species” in the home entertainment ecosystem, the goal of IPTV should be to provide individual access to content that is not structured as channels like in the other offers. This would establish a symbiotic relationship between the other species in the ecosystem, which are contributing con- tent without facing the danger of being eliminated. More specifi cally, none of the other species would have such a specifi c relationship with each individual user. Moreover, fl at access to content increases the potential of content distribution by the other species. In other words, the customization per user opens up a new market for products (including advertisement) that was untapped through the other value chains. This opens a totally new perspective for small and medium enterprises that cannot afford today’s TV advertisement, given the niche market they serve. The set of potential advertisers is not of interest to the other players; therefore, the success of IPTV in attracting them is not a loss to these other players and the value of the whole ecosystem increases. For enterprises, this means that they would need new capabili- ties to manage direct advertisement channels to their potential customers.

IPTV would not result in an increase in the number of TV channels; it may even lead to the disappearance of the “channel” concept. Indeed, IPTV would be estab- lishing a new approach to the exploitation of content, based on the single user, a billion channels if you still want to stick to that paradigm, with an electronic pro- gram guide that the user creates. It will also be associated with new navigation tools and ways of analyzing the viewer’s behavior. IPTV should be seen not only as a

“species” that terminates on the TV set, but also as a tool to adapt the quality and the format of the viewing experience depending on end-user’s needs.

This interactivity that IPTV can provide is a strong differentiator from the other species in the ecosystem. This interactivity is not confi ned to the selection of content (zapping); it includes the possibility of interacting with the content and with other species in the form of mash ups, which is likely to increase the value of the whole ecosystem.

CONCLUSIONS

Ecosystems are rising in importance at the level of economic systems. An ecosystem is more than just a set defi ned by its individual components because they interact in a meaningful way and their interactions characterize the ecosystem as well. Each ecosystem has its own point of dynamic equilibrium that is evolving over time toward a smaller use of energy and higher organization (lower entropy). Survival in ecosys- tem is derived from lower energy requirements achieved through a higher level of organization.

Enterprises have to open their boundaries to interact, at a business level, with a much larger variety of players, both inside and outside the enterprise boundaries than in the past. The sales and purchasing departments would not be the main inter- faces to the external world, rather, in the future, the internals of the enterprise, such as the design and manufacturing sections and other strategic areas, would be its main gateways to the outside. This is quite a revolution. Management of products and services beyond the point-of-sale becomes a crucial enabling factor in the evo- lution and in differentiating enterprises. This cannot be achieved unless a parallel evolution of internal enterprise processes takes place. Although the internal man- agement can be tied to centralized architecture, thus maximizing effi ciency, exter- nal management has to rely on loosely coupled interactions. While products and services can (and probably should) be produced within a centralized management architecture, they should embed autonomic systems for their postsale management. And it may pay to have those autonomic systems enabling management from third parties as well.

Enterprises have responded to the need for integration in the 1980s with central- ized managing systems and uniform interfaces/applications. In the 1990s, Business Support Systems (BSSs) were the responsibility of business departments while the Operation Support Systems (OSSs) were under the responsibility of the enterprise production area. Convergence, with the resultant shrinking of the value space available to the enterprise, has put pressure on effi ciency and resulted in a progressive integration of OSS and BSS within the company.

As the concept of ecosystem comes to the fore, a new approach to management is required to take into account the externalities of the whole ecosystem. However, here the main issue is no longer restricted to effi ciency (which remains essential), but the capability to manage what is basically “unmanageable,” since not all parts can be under the control of the enterprise. At the same time, as the enterprise feels the need to manage beyond its boundaries, so many other entities belonging to the same eco- system feel the need to manage what is part of the enterprise.

As a guide, we can use the blueprint of the most awesome evolution, that of the species, as proposed by Darwin 150 years ago (1859) and subsequently refi ned by modern science. Such a model can help us ask the right questions as to the meaning of evolution in a competitive environment. It is the complexity and variety of the interplaying factors that makes it extremely diffi cult to think about evolution in mathematical terms; nevertheless an understanding of evolution derived from a broader view that includes the context in which evolution occurs, at the same time modifying the context, may be useful.

Convergence is now an “established” word; it may be important to look at the way the word is being used, asking what it really means and its implications on various aspects of enterprise management. However, as its usage fades away, new words will establish themselves in the language and in the imagination of people. My bet is on ecosystem. I hope this chapter will help the reader take a step in that direction.

REFERENCES

1. Darwin, C., On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Cosimo Classics, New York, reprint of the

1859 edition.

2. Watts, D. J., Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2003 (Princeton Studies in Complexity).

3. Saracco, R., Technology Trajectories and Methodology, Fistera Project, European

Community, available at: http://fi stera.jrc.es/pages/latest.htm