Software Reuse Status in India

Software reuse is the use of existing software components or software knowledge to construct new systems. Reuse of components is made to construct more reliable software in less time and budget. Software components are widely being reused all over the world. India is not an exception and reuse in software industry is practiced here as well. The level of software reuse in India is not reported in literature. A survey was conducted on the Indian software industry to find out the status of reusability in India. In this survey 80 different software organisations were included from all over the country including public sector organisations. It was found that the way and extent in which the reuse is made was dependent on the nature and size of the organisations. This paper reports the extent of reuse practiced in different categories of organisations. It also investigates about the use of COTS components, search mechanism used for retrieval of components and classification of reusable components. Measures to improve reuse in organisations are also suggested.