The software component market on the internet current status and conditions for growth

ABSTRACT

Component Based Development (CBD) promises a large step forward in the quest for maximizing reuse in software development. Although a variety of definitions of CBD exists, key to CBD is the process of building systems by way of combination and integration of pre-engineered and pre-tested software components. For CBD to be the long awaited breakthrough in software development, the efficient reuse of software components has to be organized by a market system; "Components develop their full potential only in a component market" [5]. Organizations may benefit from organizing an internal component market. Software components can then be reused over multiple projects saving valuable resources. However, the most appropriate marketplace to buy and sell components would be the Internet: an international, freely accessible network, which is perfectly suited for offering, promoting and distributing components. A flourishing component market on the Internet would really allow organizations to buy and reuse against low-costs. Developers would only need to focus on functionality specific to the project, and on locating and integrating available components.Industry watchers have predicted huge growth figures for the software component market. Gartner predicts the component market will grow to $7 billion in 2001, of which $2 billion directly comes from component sales [1]. Giga information group predicts an off-the-shelf component market of $3,3 billion in 2001 [6]. Ovum goes further by estimating the size of the software component market to be $64 billion in 2002 [3].But does a component market on the Internet already exist, and if so, what is its status? Also, if a component market is so important for CBD to fulfil its promises, what are the conditions for growth towards maturity? Apart from rough estimations of the future size of the market, little research has been done to investigate the current component market and its growth. It is the objective of the research reported on in this paper to gain insight into these questions.The research described in this article contained two phases: First, an overview of the current status of the component market on the Internet was created. Next, based on this overview and a literature study, conditions for growth of the market were developed. An email-survey was held in which experts were asked to rate these conditions by importance and comment on them. Section two and three describe the results of these research phases respectively.

REFERENCES

• 1: [1] Gartner Group (1998) Getting a head start in planning for component deployment - http://www.gartner.com
• 2: Dan Kara, Seeing the forest in spite of the trees, Software Magazine, v.17 n.13, p.57-60, Nov. 1997
• 3: [3] Ovum (1998) Componentware: building it, buying it, selling it-http://www.ovum.com
• 4: [4] Pfister, C. (1997) Component software: a case study using blackbox components, Oberon Microsystems-http://www.oberon.ch/docu/case_study/index.html
• 5: Clemens Szyperski, Component software: beyond object-oriented programming, ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York, NY, 1998
• 6: R. Whiting, Buy! Sell!, Software Magazine, v.17 n.14, p.32-39, Dec. 1997

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.5 On-line Information Services
          Subjects: Web-based services

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.3 Communications Applications

          Nouns: Internet
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Web-based interaction

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.3 Software Management
          Subjects: Software development

General Terms:
Design, Management, Measurement, Performance, Theory