Understanding Software Ecosystems: A Strategic Modeling Approach

Software ecosystems is an increasingly popular form of industry organization promoted by leading software vendors. Due to its novelty and complexity, many issues remain unclear for the various parties involved in the ecosystem. A transition from more conventional industry structures and relationships to an ecosystem will likely have profound impacts on business as well as technical design choices. In this paper, a preliminary attempt is made to use a strategic modeling approach based on the i* modeling framework to help understand software ecosystems. i* models are used to depict strategic dependencies between software vendor, third party developers, and end-users, and to help explore and reason about alternate ways for achieving strategic goals for each actor. We compare the buyer-supplier relationships in the traditional software supply chain to the open ecosystem format from a mobile platform vendor's perspective. Implications of the changing dynamics between the software vendor and its direct buyer and supplier are also discussed.