Evolving software products, the design of a water-related modeling software ecosystem.

Software product evolution by means of improving their architecture, tools, or development methodologies are rather common in the lifetime of a software product. Especially if the product is in the domain of engineering where some of the basic calculation principles were established in some cases more than 50 years ago. However, a radical change of software products to evolve both in the software engineering as much as the organizational and business aspects in a disruptive manner are rather rare.

In this paper, we report on the transformation of one of the market leader product series in water-related calculation and modeling from a traditional business-as-usual series of products to an evolutionary software ecosystem. We do so by relying on existing concepts on software ecosystem analysis to analyze the future ecosystem. We report and elaborate on the main focus points necessary for this transition. We argue for the generalization of our focus points to the transition from traditional business-as-usual software products to software ecosystems.