Open Ecosystems

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Examples

From and via Greg Satell:

The App Store

When Steve Jobs and Apple launched the iPhone in June of 2007, it was an instant hit. Hundreds of consumers lined up at stores to be among the first to buy one and millions were sold in the first year. After only five quarters it surpassed Blackberry—the market leader at the time—and became a consumer icon.

Yet it wasn’t till a year later that Apple really changed the world. That was when the App Store arrived. 10 million apps were downloaded in the first three days and that number grew into more than a billion within a year. Looking back at those early apps, they seem amazingly primitive, but at the time they were revolutionary.

Apple, in essence, transformed the iPhone from a consumer product to an ecosystem. The company provided tools like Software Development Kits (SDK’s) and Application Programming Interfaces (API’s), so that anyone, anywhere could alter and improve the functionality of Apple products.

It also created a major advantage for Apple. Anyone who wanted to compete with it would have to not only match its capabilities and performance, but the collective efforts of thousands of independent developers, all striving to create something useful for Apple’s legions of fans.

And it’s not just Apple anymore. Today, brands are becoming platforms that rely less on the features of their products and more on the breadth and quality of their connections.

The “Mom and Pop” Ecosystem

Most software companies target the deep pocketed corporate customers, but Intuit creates business software for the rest of us. Founded in 1983, the company produced best selling personal finance software like Quicken and TurboTax. Based on that success, they designed QuickBooks to cater to the needs of small businesses.

Although QuickBooks, like Intuit’s earlier products, became a great success, there’s only so much you can do with software from a box. Work orders, timesheets and other process oriented tasks still needed to be prepared on paper and then input by hand. For small business owners, QuickBooks was helpful, but hardly transformative.

Now, Intuit is looking to change that by building an ecosystem for small businesses on Apps.com. Much like Apple’s App Store, the company provides tools so that developers can seamlessly integrate their products into QuickBooks and small business owners can get many of the benefits of sophisticated ERP systems for a small fraction of the price.

In a similar vein, Kareo makes cloud-based software that helps doctors in private practice compete with larger operations. Now it has created a marketplace where customers can access a variety of applications, such as ZocDoc, which helps them market to new patients and records management solution Iron Mountain, which helps to keep their practice HIPAA compliant.


Open Intelligence

One of the most exciting things to happen in technology for a long time is IBM’s Watson system, which combines artificial intelligence with big data to create what the company calls cognitive computing—machines that think much like humans do, but with infinitely more capacity.

The effort has been going on for decades. IBM got its first big triumph when its Deep Blue computer defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a widely publicized match. Then, Watson beat two all-time champions at Jeopardy, a far more difficult task. Now, Watson is being deployed in more serious work, like the fight against cancer.

The next step is where it really gets interesting. Like Apple and Intuit, IBM is opening up Watson to outside developers. It has already partnered with Fluid, to make retail recommendations, MD Buyline, to streamline purchasing at hospitals and Welltok to provide health advice to consumers.

IBM will also expand the program by offering development tools to anyone who would like to work with their platform, which will extend its reach even further. Anybody with an idea will be able tap into the power of Watson to solve problems, both large and small.

So, for example, a small building contractor will not only be able automate his workforce with mobile and QuickBooks apps, but can also ask his smartphone for recommendations on a tough job. Even for our most mundane tasks, we will be able to access the sum total of human experience as naturally as we would call a buddy down the street." (http://www.digitaltonto.com/2014/2014-year-of-the-open-ecosystem/)