Software Ecosystems: A Software Ecosystem Strategy
Assessment Model
Ivo van den Berk
Utrecht University
ivovandenberk@gmail.com
Slinger Jansen
Utrecht University
slinger@cs.uu.nl
Lútzen Luinenburg
GX Software
lutzen.luinenburg@gxsoftware.com

ABSTRACT
Software companies and organizations increasingly open up their
business to other software companies and as a consequence they
find themselves in an ecosystem of software companies,
developers and partners. These actors, and especially the software
organization that is at the core of this ecosystem, are having
difficulties in getting insight into this ecosystem and how their
actions influence its performance. In this paper a model is
presented that describes the key characteristics of a Software
Ecosystem. The central hub of a Software Ecosystem can use data
on these characteristics to its strategic advantage. This is
demonstrated by the use of the model in a case study of a hub in a
software ecosystem.
General Terms
Management, Measurement, Performance, Design, Theory.
Keywords
Business Ecosystems, Software Ecosystems.
1. INTRODUCTION
Over the last few decades a significant number of software
companies have discovered that they can no longer develop an
entire software product themselves and still fulfill all customers’
demands. Customers increasingly demand new and more specific
functionality, forcing software vendors to look to third parties,
such as other software companies or single developers, to add
these functionalities to their product. This development started
with the desktop operating systems in the 80s, when other
software companies started developing applications for operating
systems like Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. In the mid 90s it
became possible to write plug-ins for certain software products, in
essence creating the possibility for other software companies or
single developers, to extend a software product with new
capabilities. Presently, all software companies are somehow
involved in these networks of software companies that are
gathered around a single platform, called Software Ecosystems
(SECOs). Maybe one of the best current examples is the Apple
iPhone SECO, where numerous developers can create
applications for the iPhone and place them on a central
marketplace, called the AppStore.
In SECO research a few definitions already exist [3][14], we will
use the definition of Jansen, Brinkkemper and Finkelstein [13]:
Software ecosystem: 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.
SECOs can be seen as a subtype of business ecosystems, an
analogy first used by James F. Moore [16] in the early 90s
describing a new way of looking at certain networks of
businesses. These ecosystems basically consist of a number of
things: the central hub, a platform and niche players [11]. The
logic is that the central hub is the owner of the platform, and that
niche players can use this platform to create value for themselves.
In the Microsoft Windows SECO, Microsoft is the central hub,
Windows is the platform, and other companies, or niche players,
use this platform to create applications. As more software
companies follow this example and open up their business to
other software companies, more SECOs start to form. The
problem that now exists for a lot of these companies is how they
should manage such an ecosystem of software companies,
developers, and partners. These actors, and especially the central
hub and platform owner often have difficulties getting insight into
their SECO and how their actions influence the entire ecosystem
[3][12][13] and its performance. Literature from the business
ecosystem domain provides a solid foundation, but it is not
specifically aimed at the software market and as such is not
completely applicable to SECOs.
In this paper the SECO Strategy Assessment Model (SECO-SAM)
is presented that enables software producing organizations to
assess the status of a SECO, and to assess the success of decisions
taken in the past. The SECO-SAM consists of a model and a set of
research tools. The SECO-SAM is applied in a case study, to
illustrate its use. It was found to be useful by the case study
participants.
The paper continues with the description of the research method
in section 2. In section 3, related literature is discussed and in
section 4 the SECO-SAM is described. In section 5 it is described
how the SECO-SAM is applied to a case study. In section 6
observations and conclusions are provided.
2. RESEARCH QUESTION & METHOD
The objective of this research is to develop a model that can help
companies get insight in the SECO they are in so that they can
successfully manage their SECO strategy. As there is little
literature available on software ecosystems and as it is a fairly new
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topic, this research is exploratory in nature, which is reflected in
the main research question:
What key defining characteristics can be used to describe a
software ecosystem in order to support the central hub of the
software ecosystem in its decision making process?
This research question will be answered using design science
[10], where expert interviews are used in the construction process
and a case study is done to evaluate the artifact in practice. The
objective of design science is to create and evaluate an artifact that
can solve identified organizational problems. For this research the
artifact is the SECO-SAM.
The first step in the construction of the SECO-SAM was to
perform a literature study of the relevant literature in business-
and software ecosystems, part of which is described in section 3.
Existing literature was used to construct the first version of the
SECO-SAM. This version was then shown to several experts, who
are active in a software product company that is a central hub in a
young and developing SECO. Their input was used to evaluate the
SECO-SAM. The results of the expert interviews are not
described here, for the sake of brevity. The second version of the
SECO-SAM was then used in a case study at the Open Design
Alliance (ODA), the results of which can be found in section 5.
The model served as the basis for a questionnaire that was
presented to the niche players of the ODA SECO. The results of
this questionnaire were then presented to the ODA in the form of
a consultancy report. A final round of evaluation was then
performed by interviewing several employees of the ODA and
asking them about the usefulness and completeness of the results
and hence the SECO-SAM.
3. ECOSYSTEM LITERATURE
An extension on Moore’s business ecosystem theory is the
research of Iansiti and Levien [11], who in their book on business
ecosystems define a number of different roles that exist in
business ecosystems: keystones, dominators and niche players. A
keystone and a dominator are both hubs in an ecosystem. Where a
keystone however creates and shares value with the rest of the
ecosystem, a dominator seeks to extract as much value from the
ecosystem, consequently destroying it. Niche players make up the
rest of the ecosystem and they are all connected to the central hub.
According to Iansiti and Levien [11] a niche player “acts to
develop or enhance specialized capabilities that differentiate it
from other firms in the network, leveraging resources from the
network while occupying only a narrow part of the network itself.
Niche players individually do not have broad-reaching impacts on
other species in the ecosystem, but collectively they constitute the
bulk of the ecosystem both in terms of total mass as well as
variety”. Hagel, Brown & Davison [9] further divide niche players
(or participants as they call them) into influencers, hedgers and
disciples. “An influencer is a niche player that commits early and
prominently to one shaping strategy (or keystone strategy). A
hedger develops its products or services to support multiple
shaping platforms (or keystone platforms). A disciple commits
exclusively to one shaping platform (or keystone platform)”.
In these definitions one essential term is mentioned, being the
ecosystem platform. According to Iansiti and Levien [11] an
ecosystem platform is “a set of solutions to problems that is made
available to the members of the ecosystem through a set of access
points or interfaces”. In SECOs, the platform is usually a software
product, but it can also consist of software libraries which niche
players can use to extract and create value, as can be seen in the
ODA case study.
Business ecosystem health is an analogy from natural ecosystems
research [18]. The term business ecosystem health was first used
by Iansiti and Levien [11] to describe the performance of a
business ecosystem. According to them, ecosystem health consists
of the level of productivity, robustness and niche creation. These
business ecosystem characteristics and their relationships can be
seen in the domain model in figure 1.

Software Ecosystem
Business Ecosystem
Niche Player
Hub
-P oductivity
-Robus ness
-Nich Cr a io
Health
Platform
1 1
0..*
1
0..*
0..*
1
1
Keystone
Dominator
Influencer
Hedger
Disciple

Figure 1: Domain model of the relationships between the currently existing terms in (Software) Ecosystems

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