Commercial Dependency between Software Service Providers: Concept, Types, and Representation

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Commercial Dependency between Software Service
ProvidersConcept, Types, and Representation

• Orouba Almilaji
• 2004

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Outline

• Commercial Dependency in SaaS
• Causes
• Commercial Dependency Types
• Commercial Dependency Attributes
• Representing Commercial Dependency
• Example

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Commercial Dependency

• The freedom to substitute one service for another
  implies that switching between different service
  providers is always possible at the time of
  adaptation.
• In reality, switching between different parties
  in the market or changing the type of the
  relationships between business partners may not
  always be flexible.
• Those relationships which add difficulties to
  substitution flexibility are referred to as
  commercial dependencies.

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Commercial Dependency

• The essential relationships that are needed
  between service providers and service users to
  drive the composition of the service, in which
  any violation of these relationships will result
  in a cost.

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Causes

• Availability Factors
• Uncertainty, Volatility of the SaaS Market
• Legislation and Government Power
• Monopoly
• Commercial Arrangement (Contractual Agreements)

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Commercial Dependency Types

• Dependency of Contracting Sequentiality
• Exclusive Dependency
• Hidden Dependency
• Compulsory Dependency
• Charging Mechanism Dependency
• Legal Dependency

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Commercial Dependency Attributes

• Dependency Stability
• Transitive Impact
• The Cost of Breaching the Dependency

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Representing Commercial Dependency Using
Conceptual Graphics

• How to represent a multi-level view of all the
  transitive dependencies such that they allow the
  service actors at the adaptation time to navigate
  through the dependency hierarchy layers, in order
  to make important decision regarding how much it
  costs to substitute a particular service and
  whether to switch to another service or not .

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Example
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• Questions
• and
• Comments!