European Software Agenda
Missing software competitiveness
Software is the missing key enabling technology (KET) in Europe stated the EC report. Software related industry has accounted for over 65% of economic growth in past five decades – but not in Europe. The direct impact to the productivity, constantly called by macro economists is close to 20% and rising. The valuations of software product-based platform business enterprises are growing 3-5 time faster than any other high-tech industry. Software is the general-purpose technology making possible to create the innovative and industry transforming business models that “service designer” are just sketching on power points.
European policy makers and EC civil servants have NOT to responded to reports stating the urgent need to “create sense of urgency in the European software industry and awareness about software as the prime industrial differentiator and basis for innovation” (1). These reports have been removed from public access to archives to hide strategic insights drawn together by large European industry experts. Reports (2012) states “missing the strategic importance of software technology as a key enabling technology will lead to a significant drawback for global competitiveness”.
The European software product market was estimated to be 2020 400 billion euros. As we know today the market has grown much faster. The market is estimated to be over 1 500 billion euros and about 98% software is acquired form outside. Europe is the least competitive and sovereign software economy on the planet earth. The software economy is two to three times bigger than data market since it coverns and controls all transactions, processing and integration of value streams, actors and organizations.
There are several recommendations in the report (adapted by author):
Main Recommendation: A Strategic Agenda for Software Technologies in Europe should be created in cooperation with Industry, Academia and Public sector. Software is a key driver for the European economy. It is important that we take action now to ensure that Europe remains at the forefront of this strategic technology.
Recommendation 1: The agenda should outline the strength from a European perspective and how we can renew and strengthen it.
Recommendation 2.1: New form of collaboration of the software engineering researchers with the directors of funding policy to outline a strategy for culture change, leading particularly towards larger scale and longer-term collaborations.
Recommendation 2.2: Europe should set up own software repository to share code, practises and process in the name of public good to increase productivity in society.
Recommendation 2.3: Europe should promote and foster cooperative R&D or local initiatives.
Recommendation 3: Launch a European initiative on software approaches for advanced computing systems – such as edge cloud, alto cloud, stratus cloud and cirro clouds.
Recommendation 3.1: A key point is the development of solutions providing increased security and privacy in compliance with European regulations.
Recommendation 3.2: A closer cooperation is required between hardware designers, software specialists and application programmers
Recommendation 4: Create a European Source Code Observatory that builds upon the open source code sharing initiatives for the public sector in Europe and extends it to the private sector.
Recommendation 5: It is very important to consider privacy, security and trust issues alongside such developments.
Recommendation 6: Support the effort that by 2025, software intensive real time systems should be interoperable and executable inside the digital single market and they support shared hardware that is easily connectable between member states as standard.
Recommendation 7: Embedded systems will increase the intelligence, control and communication capabilities of a wide range of objects, enabling their interaction and cooperation with people and organizations.
Recommendation 8: New software engineering paradigms and programming patterns have to be developed that support different areas of human-centred usability and experience.
Recommendation 9: Develop a European strategic initiative on enterprise software technology to maintain Europe’s leadership.
Recommendation 10: Set up a DG Software and Software Mission Flagship to support the right timescales, levels of ambition and long-term funding that would allow Europe to maintain its pre-eminent position in the future generation of software intensive systems education and innovation.
Executive Recommendation Summary 10: A Strategic Agenda for Software Technologies in Europe should be created in cooperation with local European owned Industry, Software Engineering expert community and public sector actors including the demand side CIOs strategic insights.
"Software engineering goes far beyond coding and includes topics such as theoretical foundations for languages, models and systems, requirement handling and understanding, architecture design, system design, integration, specifications, documentation, verification, test, software quality, 40 security-by-design and other higher-level activities. Creating brand new programs is a rare task and software engineering has to focus less on creating systems from scratch and instead emphasize techniques and tools for extending and changing existing systems."
Software Technologies remains as The Missing Key Enabling Technology to enable Europe be competitive in digital and data economy. Europe should define "fast pass" roadmap to climb over all obstacles and aim toward setting strategic and sovereign agenda for software technologies in Europe.
Your software competitiviness evangelist,
Mika
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Helping you make sense of going Cashless | Best-selling author of "Cashless" and "Innovation Lab Excellence" | Consultant | Speaker | Top media source on China's CBDC, the digital yuan | China AI and tech
3 年Great read Mika! Agree that software development is key to growth and I'm not quite sure how EU leaders have overlooked this.
Project Manager
4 年Easyest way to empower production of European Software... is still to buy the European software so that editors can improve their products, make them interacting with others through open standards. There are alternatives to the "power points" you mentionned. yWorks , NeoDoc * are European companies, they develop efficient tools, on open standard, hosted in Europe (for Calenco) French campaign used to say "what you buy is your job".**... It is our intellectual property, our sovereignity... ... and everyone's choice. * I limit enumeration to what I know a bit : of course there are many more ! ** "nos emplettes sont nos emplois"
Software Manager, Open Source and Innovation Scientist
4 年EU Join-Up/OSOR and FIWARE were commendable efforts, also watch the EU EOSC Space in near Future... Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) to appear... My2cents
Coach for business excellence and growth | SW & HW | Systems | Cyber | Platform | Enterprise
4 年It is facinating to read the non-European news and policy papers now BIG and DYNAMIC the trillion $ or billion € market is and how little EU is doing to pursui this opportunity with real engineering [product development] policy agendas and programs. https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.forbes.com/sites/glennsolomon/2020/06/23/why-developers-are-fueling-the-next-1-trillion-software-wave/amp/
Totally agree Mika ! Which is why have started this initiative of collecting european software companies within an Index www.playeurope.digital. We started with France and have gathered 500 companies, now we need to open new markets, starting with Germany and Nordic countries. We are looking for some contacts/help to do so.