European workshop on software ecosystems: Keynote speakers confirmed:Rolf Schumann, Chief Digital Officer of Schwarz Gruppe, Thomas Curran from Ory Systems GmbH and Max Kuzkin from CloudBlue

The European Workshop on Software Ecosystems is an annual event which connects top notch researchers and business professionals in the field of software and platform ecosystems as well as business networks. 

For the eighth workshop we are looking forward to short presentations and long breaks which fuel discussions and networking between participants from all across the software industry and academia.

Confirmed Keynote-Speakers are

• Rolf Schumann, Chief Digital Officer of Schwarz Gruppe and

• Thomas Curran from Ory Systems GmbH and

• Max Kuzkin, Executive Director Engineering | CloudBlue

Schwarz Gruppe, owning large retail chains Lidl and Kaufland, hosts the event online on April 29 2021. Scan this QR code for more information.

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Open Source Business Models in action!

The European Workshop on Software Ecosystems is an annual event which connects top notch researchers and business professionals in the field of software and platform ecosystems as well as business networks. Here is an example of a topic ORY will present in a keynote at the event.

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Commercial use of open source

For a commercial company, Open Source Software is software that is licensed to that company under an open source license. The commercial company may make use of the open source, like usage or redistribution of the open source free of charge, but it also has to fulfill the obligations, like delivering a copy of the license text with the software.
So the rights and obligations have to be analyzed diligently to make sure there is no violation of the license terms.

Suppliers of open source software

Open Source software can be supplied by a community or by a commercial company. We speak of community open source and commercial open source respectively.
For community open source, a community of people provides creation, maintenance and support for an open source software. In most of the cases the community provides these services free of charge.
There are, of course, differences between a company and the open source community. These differences are important to understand, because they influence a customer´s supplier decision and they also create niches for companies to establish a business in that niche.

Commercial open source vs. community open source

So a customer might decide for commercial open source if he needs customized license terms, runs open source in a mission-critical environment and thus needs service level agreements in support or if he needs maintenance provided in a different way than via the open source community.
In many business contexts it makes also sense to have liability and warranty provisions from a supplier when using open source. In most of the existing open source licenses there is exclusion of any warranty or liability (3). This is another reason why companies might choose commercial open source over community open source.

Classification of open source business models

Based on a classification of business models (Weill et al.) we will have a look at open source business models. 

Open source usually is free of charge, but that does not necessarily mean there is no compensation for using the open source component.
The next figure shows a classification of generic business models. The business models relevant for commercial open source business are marked in bold. In this general classification of business models, software classifies as an intangible product, see the corresponding column “Intangible”. Software can be created or written (“Inventor”), distributed (“IP Distributor”) or licensed or rented to customers (“IP Lessor”). In addition, the customer needs services to run and maintain the software, like implementation, support and maintenance services. These classify as “Contractor” business. We assume here that all open source businesses make use of at least a subset of these four business models. 

No matter if it is a community or a commercial software vendor, one or many of these business models are applied. By choosing a specific selection of business models, a so-called hybrid business model is created. Creating a hybrid business model means combining different business models with their specific goals, requirements and cost structures.
Since these business models are models on a type level, there might be different implementations of how a certain business model is run. An open source community might run the Inventor business for creating software in a different way (leveraging the community) than a commercial software vendor (leveraging a development team), from a process as well as from a resource perspective. But on a type level, both run the same type of business called Inventor.
So going forward, we will analyze commercial and community open source business models as a selection of a subset of the business models identified here: Inventor, IP Lessor, IP distributor and Contractor.

Community open source business model

The open source community business model usually makes use of the following business models: Inventor, IP Lessor and Contractor.

For the community, the Inventor business is what the community is most involved in. It is about creating open source software and engaging with the community members to coordinate the work and collect the contributions of the community members.

The IP Lessor business is also important for the community. The IP lessor business defines the terms and conditions of the open source license and makes the software available to customers. The license is defined by the community and all customers using the software have to comply with it. In some cases, there are multiple different licenses for an open source software that a customer can choose from. 

The Contractor business contains all human services to customers. The community typically provides these via email and they contain services like maintenance, support, translation for country specific versions and the like. They are all carried out by community members. In almost every case, the customer does not pay for these services, but the customer has no rights to enforce any of these services and he does not have service level agreements, like a definition of minimum answer time for support incidents.

The community can serve two types of customers: software vendors and (end) customers. For software vendors, the open source community works as a supplier of software, for the customer, the open source community works as a software vendor licensing software to the customer.
These two relationships differ in the way that customers and software vendors might make use of the software. Customers usually license the software for internal use only. Software vendors license software for internal use and/or for distribution to customers. Often open source software is included in commercial software and provided to customers by the software vendor. In this case, the software vendor has to make sure he complies with all licenses of all open source software he is including in his software product.

Commercial open source business models overview

In the last section we described the community business model, now we turn to the commercial open source business model. Figure 4 shows the typical business models implemented by commercial software vendors. As mentioned before, a commercial software vendor does not have to implement all of these business models, but can rather build a unique business model by selecting a subset of available business models. One basic difference to community open source is that the IP Distributor business model is an option for commercial companies.

The history of commercial open source companies shows that in the beginning the companies focused on services around open source software, which matches the Contractor business.

The next step was to build distributions for open source software, like e.g. for Linux. This matches to the IP Distributor business model.

Today, we find all kinds of hybrid business models around open source. Companies are building software and donate it, completely or partially to the open source community (Inventor business model). Commercial software vendors often package or change or extend existing community open source software, so the community acts as a supplier of open source software to the software vendor. In some cases the software vendor does not use existing open source software from a community, but chooses to offer its proprietary software under a dual licensing strategy, e.g. under a commercial and an open source license.

Commercial services for open source

Since open source licenses are free of charge, commercial companies first and foremost focused on providing services around open source software. The expectation was simply that customers would still need services and since the license was free, that customers would have more money to spend on services.

Commercial open source companies provide the following services for open source software: Maintenance, Support, Consulting and Extension or adaption of open source software to a customer´s needs.

Maintenance services consist of the following activities: building future versions, bug fixes and upgrades and providing them to the customers.

Support services contain of accepting, maintaining and resolving incidents that the customer has while using the software.

Consulting services mean planning and executing the installation and go-live of customers´ system landscapes containing the software.

Extension or adaption of open source software based on customer´s requests is designing, programming, testing and delivering open source software that has been modified or expanded. Examples for extensions and modifications are:

• Functional Extensions for open source applications with country-specific functionality or customer specific functionality;

• Extending the usage scenarios for open source to additional countries by adding additional translations of user interfaces;

• Adapting open source software means to make open source software run on customers´ hardware and software platforms.

Summary and outlook

The evolution of open source and commercial open source business is still underway. In the future we will see additional varieties of open source business licenses, such as in open source hardware or designs, and new open source business models, like in open source on demand applications or open source software in cloud environments.

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Launching Digital Platforms in Business-to- Business Markets One topic at European workshop on software ecosystems!

The program of this year´s EWSECO on April 29 is exceptional. From key software ecosystem researchers like Slinger Jansen to key companies like Schwarz, Tricentis, ORY or CloudBlue.

TICKET SALES

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Maximilian Schreieck et al. will talk about groundbreaking research in the digital platform space.

Digital platforms are amongst the fastest growing businesses today. While the developments have mainly taken place in the business-to-consumer markets, recent years have seen successful digital platforms in business-to-business markets (e.g., Salesforce, ServiceNow). However, there are also many companies that struggle to launch digital platforms. In this presentation, we report from an in-depth study of a business-to-business platform launched in the insurance and healthcare industry. We uncover launch challenges that we expected based on literature on business-to-consumer platforms as well as launch challenges unique to business-to-business markets. Disentangling and discussing these challenges helps other companies to design their platform strategies.

TICKET SALES

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Startup Heatmap Europe: The Power of the Ecosystem. One topic at European workshop on software ecosystems !!

The program of this year´s EWSECO on April 29 is exceptional. From key software ecosystem researchers like Slinger Jansen to key companies like Schwarz, Tricentis, ORY or CloudBlue.

TICKET SALES

Click HERE to buy tickets

Since 2016 the Startup Heatmap Europe crowns the most attractive startup hubs in Europe. Based on a representative sample of founders in Europe the survey reveals the Top 50 cities where founders would like to start a company if they could choose freely. Competition is fierce, the report shows based on their analysis of actual founder movements and international ties of startups: With 27% of all founders in Europe being foreign-born, they are far more likely to move than the usual EU citizen.

Thomas Kösters will present this information.

Thomas Kösters is the Managing Director of DEEP, a global community of ecosystem builders who turn cities and their regions into world-leading innovation hubs. He has been tracking the development of European startup ecosystems for more than 5 years with their Startup Heatmap Platform and will share with us what data tells us about how to turn a region into an attractive startup hub.

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You need to know about Platforms, the API economy, software ecosystems.

Platforms, the API economy, software ecosystems. The European Workshop on Software Ecosystems online on April 29th 2021 has it all.

Here are five reasons to join.

Reason 1: The keynotes

Reason 2: Get the latest on the API economy.

We cover API management, launching platforms based on APIs, ways to grow your existing business with APIs as well as management of companies using the APIs.

Reason 3: Get the latest on creating and scaling business networks.

From the keynotes of Schwarz Group on retail, Ory and CloudBlue in software to academic presentations showing key properties of business networks in B2B markets and how to engage complementors on platforms.

Reason 4: Learn about growth opportunities for your company and for startups

We have it all, from M&A growth to growing software companies based on commercial as well as open-source business models. And we cover startup ecosystems, too.

Reason 5: See and discuss with key influencers in this space

TICKET SALES

Click HERE to buy tickets

Launching Digital Platforms in Business-to- Business Markets One topic at European workshop on software ecosystems

The program of this year´s EWSECO on April 29 is exceptional. From key software ecosystem researchers like Slinger Jansen to key companies like Schwarz, Tricentis, ORY or CloudBlue.

TICKET SALES

Click HERE to buy tickets

Maximilian Schreieck et al. will talk about groundbreaking research in the digital platform space.

Digital platforms are amongst the fastest growing businesses today. While the developments have mainly taken place in the business-to-consumer markets, recent years have seen successful digital platforms in business-to-business markets (e.g., Salesforce, ServiceNow). However, there are also many companies that struggle to launch digital platforms. In this presentation, we report from an in-depth study of a business-to-business platform launched in the insurance and healthcare industry. We uncover launch challenges that we expected based on literature on business-to-consumer platforms as well as launch challenges unique to business-to-business markets. Disentangling and discussing these challenges helps other companies to design their platform strategies.

TICKET SALES

Click HERE to buy tickets

European workshop on software ecosystems: Keynote speakers confirmed:Rolf Schumann, Chief Digital Officer of Schwarz Gruppe, Jared Preston from Ory Systems GmbH and Max Kuzkin from CloudBlue

The European Workshop on Software Ecosystems is an annual event which connects top notch researchers and business professionals in the field of software and platform ecosystems as well as business networks. 

For the eighth workshop we are looking forward to short presentations and long breaks which fuel discussions and networking between participants from all across the software industry and academia.

Confirmed Keynote-Speakers are

• Rolf Schumann, Chief Digital Officer of Schwarz Gruppe and

• Jared Preston Managing Director of Ory Systems GmbH and

• Max Kuzkin, Executive Director Engineering | CloudBlue

Schwarz Gruppe, owning large retail chains Lidl and Kaufland, hosts the event online on April 29 2021. Scan this QR code for more information.

TICKET SALES

Click HERE to buy tickets

Startup Heatmap Europe: The Power of the Ecosystem. One topic at European workshop on software ecosystems

The program of this year´s EWSECO on April 29 is exceptional. From key software ecosystem researchers like Slinger Jansen to key companies like Schwarz, Tricentis, ORY or CloudBlue.

TICKET SALES

Click HERE to buy tickets

Since 2016 the Startup Heatmap Europe crowns the most attractive startup hubs in Europe. Based on a representative sample of founders in Europe the survey reveals the Top 50 cities where founders would like to start a company if they could choose freely. Competition is fierce, the report shows based on their analysis of actual founder movements and international ties of startups: With 27% of all founders in Europe being foreign-born, they are far more likely to move than the usual EU citizen

TICKET SALES

Click HERE to buy tickets

Open Source Business Models in action

The European Workshop on Software Ecosystems is an annual event which connects top notch researchers and business professionals in the field of software and platform ecosystems as well as business networks. Here is an example of a topic ORY will present in a keynote at the event.

TICKET SALES

Click HERE to buy tickets

Commercial use of open source

For a commercial company, Open Source Software is software that is licensed to that company under an open source license. The commercial company may make use of the open source, like usage or redistribution of the open source free of charge, but it also has to fulfill the obligations, like delivering a copy of the license text with the software.
So the rights and obligations have to be analyzed diligently to make sure there is no violation of the license terms.

Suppliers of open source software

Open Source software can be supplied by a community or by a commercial company. We speak of community open source and commercial open source respectively.
For community open source, a community of people provides creation, maintenance and support for an open source software. In most of the cases the community provides these services free of charge.
There are, of course, differences between a company and the open source community. These differences are important to understand, because they influence a customer´s supplier decision and they also create niches for companies to establish a business in that niche.

Commercial open source vs. community open source

So a customer might decide for commercial open source if he needs customized license terms, runs open source in a mission-critical environment and thus needs service level agreements in support or if he needs maintenance provided in a different way than via the open source community.
In many business contexts it makes also sense to have liability and warranty provisions from a supplier when using open source. In most of the existing open source licenses there is exclusion of any warranty or liability (3). This is another reason why companies might choose commercial open source over community open source.

Classification of open source business models

Based on a classification of business models (Weill et al.) we will have a look at open source business models. 

Open source usually is free of charge, but that does not necessarily mean there is no compensation for using the open source component.
The next figure shows a classification of generic business models. The business models relevant for commercial open source business are marked in bold. In this general classification of business models, software classifies as an intangible product, see the corresponding column “Intangible”. Software can be created or written (“Inventor”), distributed (“IP Distributor”) or licensed or rented to customers (“IP Lessor”). In addition, the customer needs services to run and maintain the software, like implementation, support and maintenance services. These classify as “Contractor” business. We assume here that all open source businesses make use of at least a subset of these four business models. 

No matter if it is a community or a commercial software vendor, one or many of these business models are applied. By choosing a specific selection of business models, a so-called hybrid business model is created. Creating a hybrid business model means combining different business models with their specific goals, requirements and cost structures.
Since these business models are models on a type level, there might be different implementations of how a certain business model is run. An open source community might run the Inventor business for creating software in a different way (leveraging the community) than a commercial software vendor (leveraging a development team), from a process as well as from a resource perspective. But on a type level, both run the same type of business called Inventor.
So going forward, we will analyze commercial and community open source business models as a selection of a subset of the business models identified here: Inventor, IP Lessor, IP distributor and Contractor.

Community open source business model

The open source community business model usually makes use of the following business models: Inventor, IP Lessor and Contractor.

For the community, the Inventor business is what the community is most involved in. It is about creating open source software and engaging with the community members to coordinate the work and collect the contributions of the community members.

The IP Lessor business is also important for the community. The IP lessor business defines the terms and conditions of the open source license and makes the software available to customers. The license is defined by the community and all customers using the software have to comply with it. In some cases, there are multiple different licenses for an open source software that a customer can choose from. 

The Contractor business contains all human services to customers. The community typically provides these via email and they contain services like maintenance, support, translation for country specific versions and the like. They are all carried out by community members. In almost every case, the customer does not pay for these services, but the customer has no rights to enforce any of these services and he does not have service level agreements, like a definition of minimum answer time for support incidents.

The community can serve two types of customers: software vendors and (end) customers. For software vendors, the open source community works as a supplier of software, for the customer, the open source community works as a software vendor licensing software to the customer.
These two relationships differ in the way that customers and software vendors might make use of the software. Customers usually license the software for internal use only. Software vendors license software for internal use and/or for distribution to customers. Often open source software is included in commercial software and provided to customers by the software vendor. In this case, the software vendor has to make sure he complies with all licenses of all open source software he is including in his software product.

Commercial open source business models overview

In the last section we described the community business model, now we turn to the commercial open source business model. Figure 4 shows the typical business models implemented by commercial software vendors. As mentioned before, a commercial software vendor does not have to implement all of these business models, but can rather build a unique business model by selecting a subset of available business models. One basic difference to community open source is that the IP Distributor business model is an option for commercial companies.

The history of commercial open source companies shows that in the beginning the companies focused on services around open source software, which matches the Contractor business.

The next step was to build distributions for open source software, like e.g. for Linux. This matches to the IP Distributor business model.

Today, we find all kinds of hybrid business models around open source. Companies are building software and donate it, completely or partially to the open source community (Inventor business model). Commercial software vendors often package or change or extend existing community open source software, so the community acts as a supplier of open source software to the software vendor. In some cases the software vendor does not use existing open source software from a community, but chooses to offer its proprietary software under a dual licensing strategy, e.g. under a commercial and an open source license.

Commercial services for open source

Since open source licenses are free of charge, commercial companies first and foremost focused on providing services around open source software. The expectation was simply that customers would still need services and since the license was free, that customers would have more money to spend on services.

Commercial open source companies provide the following services for open source software: Maintenance, Support, Consulting and Extension or adaption of open source software to a customer´s needs.

Maintenance services consist of the following activities: building future versions, bug fixes and upgrades and providing them to the customers.

Support services contain of accepting, maintaining and resolving incidents that the customer has while using the software.

Consulting services mean planning and executing the installation and go-live of customers´ system landscapes containing the software.

Extension or adaption of open source software based on customer´s requests is designing, programming, testing and delivering open source software that has been modified or expanded. Examples for extensions and modifications are:

• Functional Extensions for open source applications with country-specific functionality or customer specific functionality;

• Extending the usage scenarios for open source to additional countries by adding additional translations of user interfaces;

• Adapting open source software means to make open source software run on customers´ hardware and software platforms.

Summary and outlook

The evolution of open source and commercial open source business is still underway. In the future we will see additional varieties of open source business licenses, such as in open source hardware or designs, and new open source business models, like in open source on demand applications or open source software in cloud environments.

TICKET SALES

Click HERE to buy tickets

The exiting program for the European workshop on software ecosystems is out!

The program of this year´s EWSECO is exceptional. From key software ecosystem researchers like Slinger Jansen to key companies like Schwarz, ORY or CloudBlue you will find the following topics covered:

2021 Program

Industry Keynote by Rolf Schumann, Chief Digital Officer | Schwarz Group

Industry Keynote by Thomas Curran| ORY GmbH
How to build a great Open Source Company and Ecosystem

Max Kuzkin, Executive Director Engineering | CloudBlue
How to leverage APIs to grow your business

Slinger Jansen | University Utrecht
A Focus Area Maturity Model for API Management

Maximilian Schreieck et al. | TU München
Launching Digital Platforms in Business-to- Business Markets

Christopher Jud | Kaufland Digital
Management of complementary platform-based software products

European Startup Initiative
Startup Heatmap Europe: The Power of the Ecosystem

Industry Keynote by Jon Scott | Corum Group
The Software M&A Ecosystem

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