THE SOFTWARE VALUE CHAIN: METHODS FOR CONSTRUCTION AND THEIR APPLICATION

The value chain is a widely used framework for industry and firm analysis. To our knowledge, the conceptualisation of value chains is so far guided by soft criteria like intuition of experts rather than clearly stated methods with regard to the value chain boundaries and the granularity as well as the separation of activities. Therefore, we propose a combination of well-known methods - such as the Delphi study approach and clustering algorithms - to (1) ensure a holistic view of the industry at hand by covering all underlying economic concepts, (2) ensure the uniqueness of activities, and (3) provide a hierarchy of activities that allows deriving value chains at different levels of granularity. Since software is a good with specific economic properties, practitioners and researchers require a value chain framework reflecting the industry specifics. This paper contributes by proposing methods for value chain construction and applying these methods to the software industry. The resulting universal and hierarchical software value chain can serve as a sound foundation for further studies of the software industry. Furthermore, practitioners can tailor the proposed methods to their needs and apply the software value chain to their firms

Mergers and Acquisitions in the Software Industry Research - Results in the Area of Success Determinants

This paper analyzes approaches investigating success drivers of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the software industry. The literature review covers a classification of research papers in the generic and software industry specific M&A research discipline. The results accentuate that the impact of success factors depends on the research context and that many factors have not been examined so far with respect to the software industry. Building on these insights, the resulting areas for research are pointed out. The investigation of software industry specific factors, in particular, promises to contribute to the analysis of variance in M&A performance

The Software Value Chain as an Analytical Framework for the Software Industry and Its Exemplary Application for Vertical Integration Measurement

The value chain concept disaggregates a firm into the various activities it performs. Abstracting from the firm-level thisconcept has also been applied to industries as a whole. In this paper we conceptualize a software specific value chain andprovide a first proof of concept. Our approach aggregates and unifies findings from a literature review on industry-level valuechains, software value chains, and related concepts. The resulting unified software value chain comprises eleven activities:product research, component procurement, product development, user documentation, production and packaging, marketing,implementation, training and certification, maintenance and support, operations, and replacement. A first proof of concept isprovided through expert interviews with software firms. Furthermore, we present an example that shows how the softwarevalue chain can be applied to measure the degree of vertical integration in the software industry

Results of the German Software Industry Survey 2013

This is the second year that we execute the Software Industry Survey in Germany and publish a report with the main results. As formulated in 2012, our goal is to investigate the current state of the German software industry on a yearly basis. Conclusions are made based on grounded data and empirical findings. We hope that this type of research will contribute to the work of both, practitioners and researchers