An Exploratory Study on the Need for Modeling Software Ecosystems: The Case of SOLAR SECO

Software-intensive systems have become increasingly ubiquitous, large, and complex, with dissemination in several application domains and tightly dependent upon different technologies. Such systems are usually centered in a software platform so that increasing attention has been paid to influence and interdependency in relationships among all the involved players, forming software ecosystems (SECO). Despite the initial advances in SECO research, few analytical models, case studies with real data, and integrated tool support exist. A great barrier for the evolution of the field towards aiding decision-making in the real industry is the gap lack in theof SECO modeling support. In this paper, we aim to perform an exploratory study on the need for modeling in the SECO field. We preliminarily identified some modeling elements from the SECO literature and explored them in the context of a real SECO in the educational domain.