Map for the Platform Jungle: What Types of Platforms Are There and How to Survive Discussions?

The term “platform” has been around for a very long time and is currently used in an extremely wide and diverse range of ways; unfortunately, it has to be said that it is “overused”. Due to the popularity of large platforms, the success of platform companies and the promises of the platform economy, the term is now used inflationarily. This creates a lot of confusion and even experts in the IT industry continuously talk past each other.
Time to bring some order and give an overview of different types of platforms and uses of the term platform.
This talk aims to present a map through the platform jungle that allows to identify different types of platforms and, most importantly, to understand their different characteristics and justifications. This also makes it clear how big differences exist and that sometimes the only commonality is that software is involved … The pain of unresolved terminology discussions will become clear and the map will help everyone attending to leave such useless discussions behind. Every type of platform or platform company can be characterized on the map and all our experiences show that people love to see the clearer picture.
In the talk, the audience is given the map to stop getting lost between platform terms. The talk is not technically motivated or oriented, but is intended to facilitate better communication and discussion between all professions in the digital world.