BUSINESS MODELLING FOR SOFTWARE BASED SERVICES
Bart Nieuwenhuis
University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Abstract: During the 1970s the business model concept was used for describing IT-related business processes. More
recently, the business model concept is used for analysing market structures as well as strategic choices
related to positioning of organisations within these market structures. Organisations commercialise new
ideas and technologies through their business models. The business model design can be seen as a key
decision for new firm entrepreneurs. The research field is still lacking a common and general accepted
definition of a business model. Chesbrough and Rosenbloom define a business model as ‘a blueprint for
how a network of organisations cooperates in creating and capturing value from technological innovation’.
Essentially, a business model can be seen as a definition of the manner by which an organisation delivers
value to customers, entices them to pay for value and converts those payments to profit. Initially, attention
has been paid to empirically defining business model typologies. In recent years, business model research
started focusing on exploring business model components and developing descriptive models. Osterwalder
and Pigneur use a decomposition consisting of nine components: value proposition, customer segments,
client relationships, distribution channels and revenue flows on one hand and key activities, key resources,
cost structure, partner network on the other hand. These models can also be used to develop business models
for software-based products and services. Software can be part of a tangible product that is being paid for by
customers. Due to developments such as Application Service Provisioning (ASP), Software as a Service
(SaaS) and more recently Cloud Computing, software is more and more the essential building block of
services sold to customers. Due to these developments, a business model design process heading for
delivering new experiences to customers is guiding the software development process. The state in which
the business modelling field finds itself can be characterized as the pre-scientific chaos (Kuhn): there are
several competing schools of thought, and progress is limited because of a lack of cumulative progress.
Because of this, there are no clear and unique semantics in the research related to business models. During
the last years we have been researching business models and are investigating possibilities to apply well-
known engineering principles for this application field. We present a business modelling approach as well
as some software business modelling cases.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Bart Nieuwenhuis is part-time professor at the
School of Management and Governance at the
University of Twente. He is member of the Research
Group Information Systems and Change
Management (ICMS), holding the chair in QoS of
Telematics Systems. He is working as advisor and
consultant for his own consultancy firm K4B
Innovation. His research focuses on generic service
provisioning platforms including Quality of Service
mechanisms. Application domains comprise
telemedicine as well as billing and payment services.
His research interests include service innovation and
business modelling. Bart Nieuwenhuis supervises
PhD students and publishes scientific articles and
conference papers on services provisioning
platforms and middleware technologies for Quality
of Service and Context Awareness. Bart
Nieuwenhuis is chairman of the innovation-driven
research programme Generic Communication, part
of R&D programmes funded by the Ministry of
Economic Affaires. For K4B Innovation, Bart
Nieuwenhuis works as an advisor to The
Netherlands ICT Research and Innovation
Authority. He is the managing director of Exser, the
center of service innovation in The Netherlands,
founded in 2008. In this center private companies,
academic institutions and governmental organization
co-operate in order to realise open innovation
initiatiatives. The centre is sponsored by various
large, innovative service companies and
governmental organizations in The Netherlands.
Before joining the ISCM group, Bart Nieuwenhuis
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Nieuwenhuis B.
BUSINESS MODELLING FOR SOFTWARE BASED SERVICES.
In Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design (BMSD 2011), pages 7-8
ISBN: 978-989-8425-68-3
Copyright
c
 2011 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

was part-time full professor at the Architecture and
Services of Network Applications (ASNA) group
within the Faculty of Electrical Engineering,
Mathematics & Computer Science (EEMCS) of the
University of Twente. He joined the ASNA group in
Twente after a period of five years at the University
of Groningen, where he was Tele-Informatics
professor at the Computer Science Faculty. Before
starting his own company, he worked more than 20
years for KPN Research, the R&D facility of KPN,
the telephony and Internet market leader in The
Netherlands. He served as manager of R&D
departments and Head of Strategy of KPN Research.
Bart Nieuwenhuis worked on behalf of KPN for the
European Institute for Research and Strategic
Studies in Telecommunications (EURESCOM) in
Heidelberg and was leader of various international,
cooperative projects of European public network
operators. Bart Nieuwenhuis holds a PhD in
Computer Science and a MSc (cum laude) and BSc
in Electrical Engineering, all from the University of
Twente.
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