The complexity of software systems is related to the effectiveness way to be maintained and sustained in order to control the cost of maintenance in software system due to damage and failure that will be reflected to the business process in having difficulties to be performed. Therefore, the element of software sustainability is required to ensure the software production towards sustainability development is achieved. This paper is to investigate the state-of-the-art of software development towards software sustainability by identifying the important characteristic and sub-characteristic in the three pillars dimension of sustainability such as environment, economic and social.