Software Ecosystems

Excerpt

In the software industry, more and more products are offered as systems that are composed of complementary components. Certain components constitute the core product which is the center of a so-called “Software Ecosystem” (SECO). In addition, complementary components are offered by independent vendors (Bosch 2009, p. 1). SECOs are generally defined as “a set of actors functioning as a unit and interacting with a shared market for software and services, together with the relationships among them. These relationships are frequently underpinned by a common technological platform or market and operate through the exchange of information, resources and artifacts” (Jansen et al. 2009, p. 35). The idea to offer software systems based on core products combined with complementary solutions from an ecosystem is applied in both the business-to-business (B2B) and the business-to-consumer (B2C) sector. Examples in the B2C sector are Apple with its App Store, Google with its Android Marketplace and Microsoft with its Windows Phone Marketplace. The App Store is the biggest SECO of these examples having sold 160 million consumer devices (so-called iOS devices; as of December 2010) and with 70.000 independent vendors participating in the US App Store.¹ In the B2B sector, several providers pursue similar approaches. Companies like salesforce.com with AppExchange, SugarCRM with SugarExchange, NetSuite with SuiteApp.com, Google with the Google Apps Marketplace and Microsoft with Pinpoint run marketplaces to supplement their products with complementary applications. These applications are either offered by the respective company itself or by independent vendors. …