Transformation is everywhere. In Organizations. In Society. In all the new Knowledge that is generated by the ‘acceleration of change’ in Science and Technology.

What has been called “Data Fusion” is propelled by growing demand around the world for many applications, including Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance, Telecom and Information Technology, Retail and consumer goods, Healthcare and life sciences, Manufacturing, Government and defense, Energy and utilities, Transportation and logistics, Media and entertainment – the list is not exclusive. The Data Fusion Market size was valued at USD 15.91 Billion in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 42.56 Billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 20.07% during the forecast period 2024-2030. 

There is a growing amount and variety of information due to the exponential development of the data coming from many sources – sensor data (e.g., IoT devices, satellites, and other monitoring equipment), human-generated data (e.g., social media posts, surveys, and user-generated content), and machine-generated data (e.g., logs, telemetry, and automated processes). Organizations, – private businesses and public sector bodies – can gain far greater insights by integrating and analyzing heterogeneous datasets stemming from new digital technologies such as the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), 5G (and its successor 6G which would deliver by 2030 truly ubiquitous wireless intelligence), and others. The next bend of strategic thinkers is an ideal combination of real-time decision-making, comprehensive situational awareness, and cybersecurity.  

In the near future successful organizations will be those that gather a number of “qualities”, among which the main ones are the following:

• the Inventive Enterprise – a very innovative enterprise, always ready to “innovate innovation”, impacting a large number of aspects, primarily the organization, the processes, and the products;
• the Cloud Enterprise – an enterprise whose boundaries cannot be definitively defined, i.e. what is in and what is out, the “external” and the “internal” sections of the value network;
• the Cognizant Enterprise – the enterprise capable of reaching beyond knowledge management, opening the possibility of fully acquiring not only specific knowledge, but also the way to use it, the context and the expected effects of its adoption, risks and alternatives;
• the Community-oriented Enterprise – the enterprise embracing responsibility for the impact of its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere, thus promoting new business values such as social responsibility, ethics, transparency, accountability, traceability, and so on;
• the Green Enterprise – the enterprise whose profit is not obtained by off-loading part of the costs onto the society at large, and onto future generations, and hence which is committed to the best of its possibility to the paradigm change towards a “nature-positive economy”; 
• the Glocal Enterprise – the enterprise that is capable of merging two apparently contradicting dimensions, i.e., local and global, into a virtuous blend;

In this context, what ENSA aims at doing is to provide measurable value as a top priority to its clients. This implies to deliver value on top of insights, to adopt a more agile and integrated approach (moving from platforms to ecosystems), and to make sure humans keep control in decision-making (integrating ethics-by-design and governance). 

Our strategy is to co-create and collaborate with clients in order to explore and analyze, in specific contexts and use cases, how IoT, 5G/6G, AI/ML and other emerging technologies can deliver more social value in a context of a looming new economic ecosystem shaped notably by globalization, Nature Based Services, and Ethics. 

This comprehensive report demonstrates how essential needs for daily living – Food, Energy, Water, Sanitation, Health – could be addressed globally by embedding « software tools as a service » in the respective sectors’ value chains. The vision is ensuring fairness by designing software that supports inclusive growth over extraction and exploitation. Asia and Africa represent today a massive market with over 650 million potential digital solution users, if only 10% of the global population chooses to adopt the right support software. Market is expected to grow to more than 2 billion due to economic and literacy improvements even if the benefits reach only a third of the global population. 

As accessibility of existing software tools and systems do not meet the needs of low-income users and their essential related needs which require information networks, the challenge is to reach beyond B2C food, agriculture and public health to include transportation, small businesses, and eventually other B2B markets.

The solution proposed here emphasizes transparent pricing and governance models rooted in equity to empower users and communities. It uses economics and engineering to reduce injustice and information asymmetry. Indeed, unequal access to information harms market fairness and efficiency across sectors (e.g., food, agriculture, healthcare, etc.). Software as a service integrates diverse data streams into unified tools, providing realtime market information and connected data (e.g., healthcare monitoring). Support software offers real-time dynamic pricing guidance, and reduces skewed arbitrage, empowering users with equal negotiation power. Transparency and fairness improve individual outcomes and create more stable economic conditions for the community, as a whole.

The author – Shoumen Bose Palit Austin DATTA (BSc, PhD, MRSB) – is a Member of the Royal Society of Biology (UK). He is a Senior Member of the MIT Auto-ID Labs, Research Affiliate at Dept of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Senior Scientist, Medical Device Interoperability Lab and Cybersecurity Program, Center for Smart and Automated Medical Systems, Dept of Anesthesiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School.