A number of independent software vendors have formed the European Software Association.
The Association’s mission statement is along the lines of working with European Union policy makers and other European stakeholders to foster an environment that supports innovation and competitiveness within the European software industry, and that supports the needs of other European business communities.
The organization has been formed because its participants believe the software industry can make a major contribution to growth in Europe, and by cooperating more closely with policy makers at EU level as well as with other trade organizations, it can help to make other European businesses more competitive.
This belief, combined with recent figures that seem to indicate that using IT well does deliver competitive advantages, could well trigger a new wave of interest in IT.
Software companies already provide a significant amount of employment across the EU, although inconsistencies in the way data is gathered by central statistics bodies make the number hard to estimate accurately. It is likely that the industry employs three-quarters of the number employed by the motor industry across the continent, yet to date there has been no common body to represent software vendors.
One of the main issues the organization hopes to confront is public policy, for which a working group has already been set up. Education is another key area of concern. With computer science graduate numbers falling all over Europe, there is a worry that if students are not encouraged to take up this degree choice, we will end up with a growing skill shortage across Europe. EU funding may well be available to promote such courses, and a cross-industry body can lobby the EU more effectively than individual companies.
It is tempting to say this will be just another talking shop, but the EU bodies themselves have already shown a lot of interest in this body, and the vendors concerned have been working on it for over a year. Let us hope that we start to see some concrete results before too long.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
