Integrated Ecosystems

No matter the circumstance, everyone wants to find the best way to successfully reach an end goal. As such, the pursuit of solutions drives much of the world as we know it. In terms of the tech world hardware and software are obviously needed to complete tasks, but problems can still arise. In specific, you need to consider the fact that specific software that works for one company/team may not work for another company/team. So, how does one go about remedying the situation? Two words: Integrated Ecosystems.

As everyone knows, constantly purchasing new software is expensive and can be counter productive. Cost factors aside, there's no guarantee that the software will even be effective for your team. In the end, you might just end up with a stack of software options that don't work and have no relevant use for you. If you're like most people, you'd like to avoid this. Integrated Ecosystems offer a way around such a predicament. According to Gartners: "integrated ecosystems consist of software and services that have been packaged in order to undertake infrastructure and/or application workload." In other words, it's all about integrated interactions. These interactions can translate into a number of different scenarios including interactions between software and users, software and task and so on. And that's only scratching the surface.

What does all this mean for you? Integrated ecosystems eliminate the need to buy multiple pieces of software as separate entities. Users now have the ability to use some of the best software available and switch between the services and software to find the pieces that work best for the tasks at hand. Such a setup essentially constitutes software being delivered as a form of hardware. Given that software pertains to some task on a computer system and hardware is something physical, that doesn't seem quite possible does it?  It's not so much a physical piece as much as it the basic functionality behind the hardware. You can get the same idea without having to provide actual hardware.

As one of the big predictions for 2013, integrated ecosystems have a lot to live up to. The concept is intriguing given that it allows for the best of the best software to be integrated together to provide users with a smörgåsbord of options for their tasks. And lower cost is always a good thing. Why waste money trying options that don't work when you can easily obtain an integrated ecosystem with pieces that do work? The answer should be simple.