Relationship Intimacy in Software Ecosystems: A Survey of the Dutch Software Industry

Software vendors depend on suppliers to provide the underlying technology for domain specific solutions. As a consequence, software vendors cooperate with suppliers to deliver a product. This cooperation results in supplier dependence, but also leads to opportunities. We present the results of an exploratory research based on twenty-seven case studies, identifying supplier strategies and resulting trade-offs. Strategies range from fully depending on large software ecosystem orchestrators to a minimal dependency strategy. Furthermore, we identify factors at play when selecting suppliers for different components. These factors include; ecosystem health indicators, product and license type and intensive support and maintenance flows. The results presented in this paper can be used by software vendors to assess their software supply network to review supplier relationships, but also for future research.