Software Ecosystem: Features, Benefits and Challenges

Software Ecosystem (SECO) is a new and rapidly evolving phenomenon in the field of software engineering. It is an approach through which many variables can resolve complex relationships among companies in the software industry. SECOs are gaining importance with the advent of the Google Android, Apple iOS, Microsoft and Salesforce.com ecosystems. It is a co-innovation approach by developers, software organisations, and third parties that share common interest in the development of the software technology. There are limited researches that have been done on SECOs hence researchers and practitioners are still eager to elucidate this concept. A systematic study was undertaken to present a review of software ecosystems to address the features, benefits and challenges of SECOs. This paper showed that open source development model and innovative process development were key features of SECOs and the main challenges of SECOs were security, evolution management and infrastructure tools for fostering interaction. Finally SECOs fostered co-innovation, increased attractiveness for new players and decreased costs

@article{Joshua2013,
  title     = {Software Ecosystem: Features, Benefits and Challenges},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {4},
  number    = {8},
  year      = {2013},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {J. V. Joshua and D.O. Alao and S.O. Okolie and O. Awodele},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2013.040833},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2013.040833}
}