Analysing Business Models for the Open Source Industry: a Research Proposal

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On Developing Open Source MDE Tools: Our Eclipse Stories and Lessons Learned

International audienceTool development has always been a fundamental activity of Software Engineering. Nowadays, open source is changing the way this is done in many organizations. Traditional ways of doing things are progressively enhanced or even sometimes replaced by new organizational schemes, benefiting as much as possible from the properties of open source (OS). This is especially true in innovative areas such as Model Driven Engineering (MDE) in which new tools are constantly created, developed and disseminated, many of them coming from research teams. This poses some hard questions: What is the actual impact of OS in terms of tool development? How to best take advantage of OS communities? And what are the opportunities for research teams in this context? Capitalizing on experiences in developing MDE OS tools on top of the Eclipse platform and its license model, we try to give some insights on these questions in this paper

Business Models for Free and Open Source Software: Insights from a Delphi Study

This article describes a Delphi study that consulted leading FOSS experts to identify the most important business models for FOSS. We employed the Delphi method to consult leading experts in FOSS, asking them to identify existing business models; describe potentially feasible models that are not currently implemented; identify specific categories of stakeholders involved; and identify the various goals and priorities of these stakeholders. The experts, who included software developers, corporate and individual users of software and members of leading software development industry organizations, highlighted 10 particularly important business models for FOSS which they analyzed and commentated in detail. Among other issues, the experts discussed the sustainability of various models and the extent to which they upheld users’ software freedoms

Business Model for Business Rules

Business rule models are widely applied, standalone and embedded in smart objects. They have become segregated from information technology and they are now a valuable asset in their own right. As more business rule models are becoming assets, business models to monetize these assets are designed. The goal of this work is to present a step towards business model classification for organizations for which its value position is characterized by business rule models. Based on a survey we propose a business model categorization that is aligned to different types of assets and business model archetypes. The results show five main categories of business models: The value adding business rule model, the ‘create me a business rule model’ business model, the KAAS business model, the bait and hook business model and the market place business model

Software-As-A-Service: Implications For Business And Technology In Product Software Companies

Many software organizations are currently transitioning from an on-premises deployment model to the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. If a company restricts changes only in the business or technical perspective, the transition leads to higher costs, poor adoption of the SaaS model, and in the worst case, the company can lose its business. Much literature focuses on changes within one domain and is generally also limited to one perspective. This paper provides stakeholders (i.e. product managers, and business managers) an integrated perspective (business and technological) with a comprehensive framework that covers changes in four domains: business/product structure, revenue logic, customer relationships, and partnerships. The applicability of the proposed framework is assessed with a case study of a large software product vendor. The paper also contributes by providing a new avenue to study SaaS, with an integrated perspective for the organizational transition period. For the industry, this paper suggests a way to assess the impacts of organizational transition towards the SaaS model. With this overview in hand, software-producing organizations can use the comprehensive framework to successfully transition to become SaaS vendors

Analysis of the Tool Support for Business Model Innovation

Organizations adapt their business models (BM) frequently to remain competitive. One reason for this is the digitalization of products and services. A change in strategy often brings along an adaption of the BM or a complete business model innovation (BMI). In this context, software tools can support users in the presentation and analysis of their BM by providing methodological knowledge. The assessment of a software tool is influenced by different orientations and functionalities, e.g., for pure BM representation or simulation. This contribution provides a procedure for systematically assessing BMI tools and offers an overview of existing BM tools as well as their support for BMI and a related transformation process. The results show that early phases of BMI are well supported, while later phases are hardly represented. A possible reason for this lies in the complexity of later BMI phases. First steps towards supporting later phases through software are discussed

DEFINING KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR BUSINESS MODELS: DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR A METHOD AND TOOL SUPPORT

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) play an important role in guiding the management of business models throughout their lifecycle. However, existing research lacks practical methods to guide the definition of KPIs for business models. Without proper guidance, there may be a mismatch between the intended business model design and its implementation, resulting in many promising business model ideas failing to reach the market. To address this problem, we adopt a design science research approach to design and evaluate a method and supporting IT tool for defining business model KPIs. In this research-in-progress paper, we present a set of meta-requirements and design principles for developing the method and tool support. We instantiate the requirements and principles in a tool prototype and evaluate their validity in semi-structured interviews with five industry experts. Our study contributes to research on KPIs for business models and the development of methods and tools for business model management

DYNAMIC BUSINESS MODELS: A COMPREHENSIVE CLASSIFICATION OF LITERATURE

Business models are vital to companies’ success; to stay competitive, companies continuously adapt and innovate their business model. The conceptualisation of business models has received much attention from prior research and the focus of research is shifting from a static perspective to a more dynamic perspective. This research is a comprehensive and up-to-date literature analysis of the concept of dynamic business models. To achieve a systematic and objective penetration of the research field, we used a classification framework consisting of 15 evaluation dimensions. We identified the main research streams on the topic and present the most relevant approaches, such as system dynamics modelling. A total of 42 relevant literature sources were found. Finally, we highlighted gaps for future research, such as a need for more detailed analyses of the interdependencies between the components a business models consists of