Classroom Companion: Business

4.4 
 Computer Infrastructure and Platforms as Ecosystem 
Components
The software modules required to produce a digital service run on computer 
platforms. The platform is made up of the equipment in the equipment plane of 
.
Fig. 
4.5
 and is the mediator between the network infrastructure and the applica-
tion software. The platform may consist of a single computer or be a distributed 
system of interconnected computers, possibly owned by different organizations 
or people. The overall platform architecture may, therefore, be very complex and 
involve several stakeholders who must cooperate to provide the service offered to 
the consumers. Google maps showing the GPS location of the user is an example 
of a service requiring at least two independent providers of partial information.
The most common platform is cloud computing offering services ranging from 
pure infrastructure support to complete software packages and any combination 
thereof. In the cloud computing business model, the provider of the digital service 
or good does not own all the production facilities but rent some of them from 
other stakeholders (the cloud providers). The service provider then reduces the 
need for investments in ICT infrastructure and can focus entirely on the core busi-
ness. Other advantages are that the provider can reduce the time to develop the 
product considerably, meet challenges associated with fluctuating market size, 
 
Chapter 4 · Digital Economy Ecosystem

---

55
4
eliminate the need for expert knowledge of processing and storage technologies, 
and reduce the need for system management and maintenance.
The key concept in cloud computing is “Everything as a Service” with acro-
nyms EaaS or XaaS. There are three main categories of services: