System or device participants represent the technology components in the business network. They are really a special kind of individual participant, and if you find it helpful, you can just think of them that way. There are however, two reasons why we call them out separately.

Firstly, there are a lot of technology components in today's business networks! For example, there are ERP systems, payment engines, reservation systems, transaction processors, and much, much more. In fact, most of the heavy-lifting inside today's business networks is done by these systems. These systems are associated with organizations that own them, and just like the individuals we discussed earlier, these systems act on behalf of their owning organizations—they too are its agents.

The incorporation of a blockchain into a business network is going to add more system participants with whom the other participants (individual, organizational, and system/device) can interact. It's important to be aware of these blockchain system participants because they are going to provide very useful services to the business network!

Secondly, devices are becoming a more important part of the business world. And, while many devices today are relatively simple, there's no doubt that devices are acquiring more characteristics of being autonomous. We've all heard of the expected emergence of self-driving vehicles, and it's in this spirit that we introduce the concept of device participants. It may be increasingly important to think of these devices playing a larger role in business networks. So, while we don't expect cars to become intelligent anytime soon (whatever that might mean!), it's helpful to call out these increasingly autonomous devices as active rather than passive entities in a network.