Partnership Characteristics within Large Software Ecosystems

Partnership and membership models are a powerful tool for large software ecosystem orchestrators to manage clusters within their ecosystem. A partnership model is utilized by a software vendor or platform owner to sustain, manage, cluster and expand their partner ecosystem while open source associations strive to achieve the same with their software ecosystem utilizing a membership model. Both model types are clusters of active participants within a certain section of the ecosystem, that is why we refer to these models as ecosystem participant clusters.

The taxonomy above describes the structure of an ecosystem participant cluster. A cluster owner can posses zero or more ecosystem participant clusters, each having a unique type (e.g. partnership model, membership model). A large software vendor, for example, can utilize a global partnership model and can at the same time have separate region or market-specific partnership models. As mentioned, each ecosystem participant cluster consists of a certain number of participants, organizations that did engage into one or more commitments with the cluster owner. Each commitment has a unique contract, that is agreed on by the participant and the cluster owner. Within each commitment the participant fulfills a role. Roles within the model can have zero or more dimensions, an example of a role with more than one dimension is a golden level value-added reseller. Each role has a set of requirements that has to be met in order to obtain or retain this role. Also, every role has a set of predefined benefits it brings for the participant. Furthermore fulfilling a role within a cluster comes with certain costs, except for educational and community commitments that are often free of charge.

While the structure of different clusters is similar, differences are identified in other areas. While studying the global partnership model of SAP and the membership models of the Open Design Alliance and Eclipse Foundation as case studies, differences were indentified in primary structure, entry barriers, model governance, accessibility of documentation and goals, as summarized in the classification table above. Both membership models have a layered primary structure that is designed on an increasing level of involvement by a participant over time while the global partnership model of SAP has a role-based structure that suits function-specific needs. Furthermore the openness of a software ecosystem has an influence on the model governance. SAP, a closed software ecosystem, includes platform defence in the governance for their partnership model, which, for example, means participants can possibly lock themselves out of partnering with SAP by having a high level of involvement with another closed software ecosystem. While all three software ecosystems share some goals for their clusters, (e.g. extending the ecosystem, product development and co-innovation) their different organizational form makes them prioritize these goals in a different way. SAP, for example, strives to monetize on their partnership model and aims for the extension of market reach through their partners while ODA and Eclipse prioritize product development instead. The different organizational form also influences the range of benefits expected for participants. Benefits in a membership model cover a wider range and include influence on the decision-making process within the open source association.