Call me, maybe? 3 prerequisites to dial in into the world of data ecosystems

First of all, you need a telephone network of phone lines and connections. The same is true for exchanging data in a digital ecosystem: above all, you need the respective data space with uniform standards for all its participants. Thankfully, several such ecosystems already exist for different industry branches – among them Catena-X for the automotive manufacturing industry.

How do you connect your phone to the network? You need a phone plug. In terms of data ecosystems, your connector will need to work as a system integrator, giving you the necessary interface to interact with the data space and other participants.

Once you’re connected to an existing phone network, you need to know who you’re trying to call – which means you need both the phone number and the name of the receiver. In other words: you need a phone book. In phone books and data spaces, storing data alongside its context information is crucial. After all, data is meaningless without semantics – just a number that no one knows to interpret correctly. Similarly, a list of phone numbers does not get you anywhere if you don’t know who they belong to. In our analogy, digital twins with aspects deliver the numbers along with their context information. The digital twins contain the necessary data, while aspects and aspect models define the semantics to make it meaningful. All these digital twins are then organized and managed in a scalable and decentral Digital Twin Registry – the phone book.