Software Ecosystems' Architectural Health: Another View

Nowadays the software ecosystem health has received increasing attention as an important field for managing software ecosystems. Researchers have intensified studies in this area with the goal of assessing ecosystem health and possible causes for the success achieved. However, none of them have considered directly the effects of the software architecture on the ecosystem health. There are some architectural aspects weighting considerably on the balance of the whole ecosystem. So, software ecosystem health should be addressed based on different perspectives, aligned with novel assumptions and ways of thinking. In this paper, we exploit intersections between architecture and software ecosystem health. We consider the concept of the "software ecosystem architectural health" from the perspective of key areas and practices, which affect the state of the ecosystem health. We also identify some research challenges and outline future work.

I. Introduction

The idea of a software ecosystems' health continues the analogy with natural ecosystems. The state of the system or the species is represented by its “health”. Hartigh et al. argues that ecosystem health is concerned with the systems longevity and propensity for growth [1]. In order to quantify the health of an ecosystem, Iansiti and Levien identified productivity, robustness, and niche creation as performance indicators [2].