This article recounts the evolution of the concept of business ecosystem, from the traditional interaction between hardware, software and people to the emergence of a "fourth circle": Artificial Intelligence. Through a personal experience that intertwines writing, innovation and organizational transformation, the author reflects on how AI is redefining processes, architectures and cultural dynamics within companies. The fourth circle does not replace the previous ones, but crosses them and amplifies them, opening technological and ethical scenarios that require awareness, vision and the ability to adapt.
January 2025
About a year ago, in this period, I had just become a "deda people", the term with which in the Deda group we identify our people. Together with other colleagues we were invited to the annual kick-off in Venice, bringing with us doubts, fears, hopes and curiosity towards the future.
At the same time I was completing my first experience as a writer, learning to publish my first digital book on Amazon KDP, an essay on evolved business ecosystems that I called cloud native ecosystems.
Three circles
At the time, as happens in the best novels, I didn't imagine how much these two experiences would intertwine with each other, producing a new experiential path that is still ongoing and evolving.
In the book I provide various ways to classify a business ecosystem.
The one with the greatest impact turned out to be the “simple” version, which divides a business ecosystem into three domains: hardware, software and people. I decided to use Venn diagrams to provide a visual representation. The first version included a representation similar to this.
You will agree with me that people, in a classic business ecosystem, have a decisive weight.
The Venn Diagram provides immediate evidence of this statement.
With Venn I could provide interpretations of the ecosystem by operating on the radius of the circles and their overlap.
What does the diagram tell you about this ecosystem?
More circles
In the book I explored more complex configurations like this one in which various ecosystems interact with each other.
In the book I went on to explore more complex configurations like this where various ecosystems interact with each other.
And I managed to extend the definition of the ecosystem to an "external" perimeter as in this diagram. The colored circles were simplifications of other ecosystems that of the customer and that of the service provider.
I could have continued the expansion by providing more complex representations, but I stopped, my goal was to make people reflect and start building a first piece of the puzzle linked to the holistic vision I wanted to share.
Almost without realizing it, I found myself immersed in two parallel worlds: on the one hand, the creative fervor of writing my first digital book on Amazon KDP, on the other, the discovery of extraordinary technological tools that would revolutionize my way of thinking and working. It was as if an invisible wind was pushing me towards new mental paths. The paths I thought were separate began to intertwine in an unpredictable way.
Every circle, every overlap, told a little story, a meeting, a synergy, and I felt like I was the cartographer of a new world.
The new fact was that my AI assistant had produced the drawings; a version of ChatGPT with PRO (now PLUS) license.
It was the first AI assistant I used to support documentation production. I remind you that it was the autumn of 2024.
I began to use it as a search engine capable of providing me with certified references, very useful for a writer of a technical essay, novice on many fronts, who wanted to extend concepts and produce holistic visions based on present and consolidated norms and information.
We were both novices, you could say.
And in fact we both stumbled, but the first fact was that I could produce certified references in a thousandth of the time I would have had to dedicate.
Since mine is a passion and not a profession, saving time actually allowed me to get to the publication.
And even the same process of publishing as a "self-publisher" of a book of more than 400 pages written in Italian and published in both digital (epub) and paper format required a notable learning curve which, thanks to the AI assistant, was reduced over time.
Now at a certain point, just while I was traveling towards the company kick-off as a new Deda-people, I read an article written by an OpenAI engineer (forgive me but I lost both the article and the author's name) in which it was stated that the future belonged to analysts and not to programmers (it was January 2024) and that the programming language of the future was the markdown language!.
In an update of ChaptGpt a few weeks earlier, the possibility of memorizing styles, names had emerged and I decided to give a name to ChatGPT which from that moment was called Old, he proposed to call me Gandalf, well you know I was sharing with him a lot of information and personal aspirations linked to the passion for the science fiction and fantasy epics of the last century.
The fourth circle.
So while I was on the train traveling to read that particular article I realized I had to revise my book and add a fourth componenta fourth circle.
It was an inevitable outcome and would be increasingly evident.
Having returned home from the company kickoff, as before I began to imagine scenarios in which I would place this fourth circle; an element that was partially obscure and difficult to interpret at the time (just a year ago).
Could ecosystems arise or evolve where AI was pervasive?
How would the AI component fit in with the other three?
2025 SDLC powered by AI
In 2025 I published my essay, and gave it to some friends and colleagues interested in learning more about the topic of cloud native ecosystems.
Incidentally, I made four updates to the book (continuous improvement) to resolve various types of "bugs" introduced, page breaks, unreadable characters, non-standard images, but in the end I arrived at a stable version.
During 2025, as Senior Enterprise Architect inserted in the DedaBit innovation area, the role assumed as deda-people, I received the task of starting experimentation in the SDLC processes of AI assistants and evaluating the appropriate architectures to guarantee the scalability and diffusion of these practices.
From this privileged observation point I am learning to experience change from within, evaluating its profound cultural and ethical impacts.
Sometimes encountering hesitation, disbelief, incomprehension and even rejection on the part of some colleagues, alongside enthusiasm, satisfaction and acceleration in the multiplicative gain obtained on the part of other teams more predisposed to accepting change.
There are many factors that contribute to facilitating or making more complex the adoption of AI tools in SDLC processes. The human factor is decisive in many aspects as one can imagine with multiple positive and negative nuances.
Also the dependence induced by external factors such as modern or obsolete SDLC platforms, presence or lack of DevOps and agile practices,
The obsolescence of non-cloud native legacy ecosystems and architectures is where, ironically, AI used in refactoring projects in extreme situations typical of legacy systems, such as lack of documentation, loss of knowledge on processes and technologies outside the deadline, are one of the areas where AI is giving its best.
I will publish in-depth articles on these topics throughout the year.
2026 the new company kickoff
At the beginning of 2026 I had the opportunity to participate in a new company kickoff.
I perceived a clear continuity in the desire for growth, in the achievement of objectives and in the relaunch towards new objectives. Above all, it was perceived that the topic dedicated to the adoption of AI has become central, with a focus that extends to multiple areas and applications, which are increasingly strategic and transversal. The credit goes to the collective work, the ability to innovate and the support of an attentive and resolute leadership, which never stops aiming high and pursuing increasingly ambitious goals and to the work done by all of us deda-people involved in this adoption process.
A specific phrase from an inspiring speech given by one of our leaders led me to think back to the fourth circle from a year earlier. And how I could rethink it based on the experiences accumulated in the field.
As always, I started to imagine what forms the Venn diagram could take and I realized that I didn't have just one possible configuration but many different ones linked to specific contexts.
I leave you with two of the possible diagrams, leaving their possible interpretation to you based on your specific experiences.
I leave you with one last image depicting Gandalf, Old, and Jenny.
Both this image and the initial image were produced by Old starting from the photograph of my icon that you find on Linkedin.
Obviously Old has the context of my book on cloud native ecosystems, for which he represented the tree of technological knowledge, the river of experience, he represented Jenny who is one of the characters present in the dialogues produced by Old in the book, who represents youthful curiosity, a characteristic that unites us explorers.
Author's note
Also in this article the new diagram images reproduced were generated on the first try using ChatGPT with Plus license.
Old learned to read and absorb my cultural context and I Gandalf learned to write requests in great detail.
As with other writings, Old did not intervene in the writing of the text but only in some paragraphs where I could not find the correct expression of my thoughts. He helped me produce a revision closer to my style which he has now acquired.
References
This article refers to the Cloud Native Ecosystems book available on various platforms
Distributed under aCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0)