The next ten years promise a $100 trillion marketplace for eco-system development. I made the number up. I did so because eco-system potential is not quantifiable. It represents platforms built by Goggle, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft. It represents giant manufacturers like Alibaba, Foxconn, Samsung, Mitsubishi, Toyota, and Volkswagon. It represents pharmaceutical giants like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Roche, Merck, and Sanofi. It represents transportation giants such as UPS, DHL, China Railway, Russian Railways, BNSF, CMA CGM DB Schenker, XPO Logistics, Nippon Express, and C.H. Robinson. It represents the top government contractors including Lockheed Martin, Boeing Co., Northrup Grumman, McKesson, General Dynamics Corp., United Technologies Corp., and Raytheon.
Some of these are known to everyone. Some are not. What is most important is that each of them represents arguably a trillion dollars over the next ten years. In the United States, we have heard political dialogue around the “rich getting richer,” the top 1% and the elite class. What has often been missed over the last four years is how pro-big business the governments and general economic environment has been.
Yesterday’s million dollar companies are billion dollar companies. Yesterday’s billion dollar companies are trillion dollar companies.
What does this have to do with Ecosystems? It has quite allot to do with ecosystems. Technology ecosystems in particular. These ecosystems allow consumers and businesses to join an environment … like Amazon. Within Amazon, all sorts of things happen. Goods are sold. Products are reviewed and rated. Purchasing, service and customer returns are processed. Payment and Recievable systems are made available. Book printing and publishing is available. Servers, networks, data storage and web application hosting are all available. In other words, you can join Amazon rather than building your own eCommerce site or brick N mortar store. In fact, at this point, a new manufacture almost has to argue from the perspective of “why would we do anything but use Amazon as our point of sale service? Even beyond this, the eco-system has large organizations joining it at all levels. Kohls Department Stores have become an Amazon return center. Parcel delivery services have joined. Car manufactures have supplied vehicles. Major retailers have created their own stores within Amazon.
This is easy to understand as a consumer. However, the Power and Energy Industry also has to consider the technology ecosystem. If we go to our graphic, just take DISTRIBUTION. How many different sub-systems have to be factored into an effective ecosystem?
Just in the Power Distribution ecosystem, the complexity of the solution is non-trivial. In fact, for years, power utilities have used SCADA and other complex systems to build a patchwork of high reliability control and management solutions. They have historically been costly and overly technical. The ecosystem serves to revolutionize this simple environment.
- Direct and indirect cost reduction
- Improved security and access control
- Multi-vendor participation and improved monetization
- Energy and a Service and corporate customer enablement. (Web and mobile service monitoring and provisioning)
- Smart and micro grid implementation (Ubiquitous element and system management)
- Technology agnostic and ability to subsume legacy systems (marrying SCADA and non-SCADA technologies)
Advok8 is spending allot of time looking at ecosystem development. Our large customers to our small customers will have to figure out how to plug into these large trillion dollar ecosystems to be ready for the future. Whether you sell bolts, lumber, technology or services … the ability of Advok8 to study your participation in this technology and opportunity is very important to your growth.
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