First Software Ecosystems for the Life Sciences Application Domains (SALAD 2015) Workshop, May 8th 2015

Introduction

A software ecosystem (SECO) is a collection of systems, which are developed and co-evolve in the same environment. Typically, a software ecosystem consists of a common software platform and a community of internal and external actors that compose software systems to satisfy their needs. The concept is inspired from natural ecosystems in which organisms are characterized by symbiotic relationships and their survival relies heavily on the survival of the ecosystem.

Inter-organizational

Software ecosystem based development is different from the traditional software development in which a software product was the result of effort of an independent software vendor typically developing a monolithic product. In software ecosystems, the development is not intra-organizational but inter-organizational and as such spread outside the traditional borders of software companies to a group of companies, private persons, or legal entities. Software ecosystems is also different from traditional outsourcing techniques since the initiating actor or platform owner does not necessarily own the software produced by contributing actors.

Android ecosystem

An example of a software ecosystem is the Android ecosystem that provides a platform for external developers who can build applications, and which can then be distributed to Android users via the Google Play store. The current Android ecosystem consists now of more than 700.000 apps that have been developed by external actors worldwide. Initiating and maintaining the Android software ecosystem has helped Google to increase the value of Android for its users, increased attractiveness, accelerated innovation, and decreased cost.

Application domains

Software ecosystems are gaining importance in and have been applied to different application domains including operating systems, healthcare, gaming, open source development framework, computer-aided design, and system simulation. Similarly we can observe the need and benefits of the adoption of software ecosystems for the life sciences application domains such as smart logistics, farming technology, smart agro-food production, environmental services, and geo-information systems.

Goal of this workshop

The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners and researchers at Wageningen University and its research centres, to exchange experiences, results and ideas related to all aspects of software ecosystems within the context of life science application domains. Subsequently, we wish to further explore the opportunities for collaborations in the field of software ecosystems in particular and smart software/system engineering in general. The workshop will result in a report in which the different challenges, experiences and solution directions are described.