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. …
WI – WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK – ist das Kommunikations-, Präsentations- und Diskussionsforum für alle Wirtschaftsinformatiker im deutschsprachigen Raum. Über 30 Herausgeber garantieren das hohe redaktionelle Niveau und den praktischen Nutzen für den Leser.
BISE (Business & Information Systems Engineering) is an international scholarly and double-blind peer-reviewed journal that publishes scientific research on the effective and efficient design and utilization of information systems by individuals, groups, enterprises, and society for the improvement of social welfare.
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Evans et al. (2006, p. vii) describe a software platform as “a software program that makes services available to other software programs through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).”
The data are collected weekly by FaDOM since 2010. For every marketplace only Software as a Service products are considered (e.g., the category “Online Application”) for reasons of comparability. The data for Pinpoint refer to the US version. The gap at AppExchange results from a deficient data collection on 2010-11-15 which was not included in the evaluation.
The mapping of dependent vendors was conducted by name of the vendor. The three vendors “Force.com Labs” (246 niche solutions), “salesforce.com” (10 niche solutions) and “Salesforce.com Foundation” (5 niche solutions) could be identified as dependent niche vendors.
The bigger, the more niche solutions; the size of the biggest, checked circle – Force.com Labs – was reduced due to the large number of niche solutions. Note that the positions of the circles in the figure have no meaning.
