![[photo-1522932753915-9ee97e43e3d9.jpg]] Photo by [Dhruv Weaver](https://unsplash.com/@dhruvweaver?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/B8XkBocl0z0?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) The Ecosystem is a highly complex system of systems, focused on sustainability, governed by **stochastic events** with tendency to essential elimination of disruptive effects and maintaining steady state in order to prevent ecological collapse (system of systems failure). This system of systems is crucial in engaging of standalone systems, reacting on their events, taking into the consideration diversified environments and conditions inside them, monitoring the “**stress levels** of particular systems” and makes decisions based on ecosystem “survival” priorities, not a particular standalone system which could be dispensable. This complexity is far beyond today’s architectural frameworks and design tools and we believe, we have to take fundamentally different approach here, if we really want to understand existing ecosystems. Moreover, if we want to architecture and design new ecosystems, we have to be able to describe them in structured way, define their dependencies and dynamic logic behind (not by static interpretation as of today). --- As you read other articles focused on [[Ecosystem and Spheres|Spheres Philosophy]], you understand four elementary spheres [IoT, SoR, CoB, and WoL] which truly represent four universal elements of every advanced ecosystem. These elements are never separated and they are not always mandatory, however they are essential part of it. Our approach to diminish complexity of ecosystem is focused on non-standard collection definition of Ecosystem View Points (depicted below) and supported by **ubiquitous abstractions** within [[What is CIEL and why do we need Ecosystem Language today|CIEL]]. ![[Pasted image 20230709104124.png|Figure 1: Ecosystem Viewpoints]] All viewpoints are optional and their usage largely depends on architecture depth and the need for ecosystem design granularity, although they could define entirety of ecosystem via various levels/layers. Very similarly to today’s enterprise architecture framework, we can create conceptual, logical or even physical diagrams of particular views, however there are couple of major differences preventing us to re-use existing approaches: • SPHERES philosophy is not compatible with existing frameworks , however it fully encapsulates them on lower levels • It has dynamic behavior and we are NOT specifying static architecture artifacts. At the time we defined As-Is and To-Be architecture, the situation already changed... • We are reusing abstraction points with symbols supported by CIEL • Although we could go to Micro Level, it’s never observed in Ecosystem design to handle Low level elements of particular system • There are additional characteristics, not supported by today’s architectures (such as sustainability, virtual “everything”, abstraction of abstractions, dynamic patterns etc.) • We believe, ecosystem of IoT is enabled by Cloud Computing in the wider sense of connectivity • Ecosystem Architecture is designed for evolution – there isn’t any hardwired logic on System of Systems level, only on separate systems levels. The logic on Ecosystem level is fully adaptable and it’s not reusing any atomic services owned by standalone system (for sustainability purposes) ## High level overview of Ecosystem Viewpoints Any viewpoint can involve one, two, three or all four combinations of the spheres. The examples below are representing viewpoints that can be expressed with one or many spheres. The “Time of Ecosystem” and “Value of Information” are #ViewPoints with four relations, the rest of the ViewPoints has three relations only. ![[Pasted image 20230709104148.png|Figure 2: Structure of Ecosystem Viewpoints]] **Value of Information** viewpoint How value is created, shared and exploits in technical, social, commercial and environment value sense **Time of Ecosystem** viewpoint How time in the ecosystem works in human “passage of time” (i.e. Time zones, planetary time) and computing “compute speed of time” (system time, time dilation). How this can affect and behave in a multiplicity way affecting how resources, behaviors, transaction flows, events and outcomes interact in local and distributed sense **Societies and their entities** viewpoint The interaction of social and business networks, human, group and societal personas and value systems. This can occur in human and system interconnections as technology impacts social systems and agent and avatar societies may become increasing evolved. **Impacts on environments** viewpoint How actions in technological, social and commercial spheres can impact biological and environmental systems and vice versa. **Networks and their relations** viewpoint How relations built in virtual and physical worlds can become increasingly interrelated workloads and experiences. **Matter of transactions** viewpoint The development of commercial and information transactions and flows impact on social , resources and technological systems and spheres of influence. ## Ecosystem Viewpoints and Scenarios Viewpoints are very powerful methods for #scenario analysis and planning to better understand and visualize ecosystems and their outcomes. ### Context visualization Viewpoints can create context of one or many issues being affected in an ecosystem context, this may be obscured by examining the issue from within the ecosystem or from just one of the spheres e.g. technological , commercial, environment or social impact only, when the issue can impact and be interrelated by all spheres. ### Effective business models and social models Viewpoints can help define effective models of a business environment and/or a social context which need to understand network effects, flows and interdependencies. ### Direction Viewpoints can help set a strategic and behavioral direction vector or vectors to better assess risk and value outcomes in a network context seen from an ecosystem perspective. ### Monetization and markets Viewpoints can establish monetization strategies and outcomes that consider the accumulative effects of network behaviors and markets that involve many participants and market channels. The understanding of marketplaces and their impact on geographies and countries is a significant topic in today’s converging economies and integrated technological market exchanges ### Metrics Viewpoints can help create “tags” and information in context” that can be used to set effective metrics for ecosystems and their performance. Often establishing metrics can be restricted to a specific sphere of influence when many situations involve interdependencies that create overlap at the macro, meso and micro behavior and system viewpoints ### Security viability and sustainability Viewpoints can help visualize and express scenarios involving the complexity of security, privacy and viability of resource sustainability. This is a significant issue in the trends of increasing interconnected behaviors, resource controls and availability of information ### Information Viewpoints enable enhanced information management to target next generation intelligence and automation processes, time and value optimization. This is a pressing and increasing concern in the explosion of data and distributed networks evolving in the internet revolution today and into the future ## Related to [[Ecosystem Architecture - Patterns]] [[Ecosystem Architecture - Abstracts]] [[Ecosystem Architecture - Perspective vs Perception]] [[Ecosystem Architecture - Dimensions]]