News Industry Focus Smart energy Impacts of global recession on the software market
A recently published Bench - marking Report, from Flexera Software; the second install- ment of its Application Usage Manage ment, highlights trends in the software and high-tech device industry.
Kontron is planning key technology developments as announced by the company's CEO, Ulrich Gehrmann (pictured). This includes a long-term technology agreement with the Federal Grid Company of the Unified Energy System (FGC UES), the largest operator of energy supply networks in Russia. The agreement between FGC UES and
Kontron's Russian subsidiary RTSoft, foresees close cooperation in the area of so-called smart grids, among other areas. It will entail the development of joint new hardware and software solutions to boost the reliability and efficiency of Russian electricity supplies. The company is to produce and supply the systems and solutions developed. "A switch towards smart grids is also underway in Russia. These smart grids represent a booming market across the world, and our technology allows us to make a contribution to offsetting flu - ctuations between energy supply and demand with high-performance IT components and intelligent metering. We anticipate a high level of orders over the coming years as a result of this cooperation in Russia," said Gehrmann. Kontron:
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The new report examines the impact of the global recession on the software industry aro - und the world by looking at aggregate levels of software downloads by customers via the company’s Software Flex - Net Delivery on-demand prod- uct; a cloud-based electronic software delivery service used by software vendors and device manufacturers to deliver appli- cations, patches and upgrades to their customers.
Aggregate software down- loads statistics, tracked by the program, can be correlated to vendor revenues from new and existing customers.
The Benchmarking Report first examined the share of soft- ware downloads by region between 2007-2010, and found that North America, Europe and Australia/New Zealand have all maintained their relative share of the software market during this timeframe, at 63%, 34% and 2%, respectively. But closer examination reveals uneven impact of the recession by region.
For instance, download Summer web school for engineering
Engineers are being invited to develop their knowledge and expertise by taking part in National Instrument’s UK & Ireland LabVIEW, throughout the month of August.
The event is made up of a series of twelve interactive web- casts about the company’s graphi- cal programming language for the development of test, measure - ment and control applications. Regardless of experience, engi- neers and scientists can learn how to rapidly and cost-effec- tively interface with measure- ment and control hardware, analyse data, share results and distribute systems for test and control methods.
Delegates can explore 25 years of LabVIEW development and the evolution of this graphical
Electronics JULY 2011 programming language.
During this webcast series, attendees can explore how the platform enables the develop- ment of applications in a wide variety of industries. Taking place from 2
nd to 25 th
August, every webcast in the Summer school will be broadcast twice each day, at 10am and 2pm, giving participants the opportu- nity to interact and chat with pre- senters and fellow attendees. Webcasts will also be available to view on demand after the series is finished.
For further details, a full list- ing of topics of coverage and to register for the webcasts, visit the company’s website at:
www.ni.com/uk/summeroflabview. National Instruments
www.ni.com
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activity in Australia and North America showed the greatest volatility with 20% in down- load growth in 2007 prior to the recession, and up to 19% declines during the recession. In contrast, Europe remained relatively stable; with only 6% download growth in 2007, pre- recession, but declines peaking at only 12% from 2009 to 2010. “This data reveals that the global recession did not work to any single region's advantage or disadvantage - everyone shared in the pain,” said Bashyam Anant, Director of product man- agement at Flexera Software. “However, the pain was greater for those regions that, in good times, saw stronger growth. Volatility - by defini- tion, works both ways.” However, the picture of European stability changes upon closer examination of download activity by sub- region and country.
According to the Benchmark - ing Report findings, between 2007 and 2010, Eastern and Southern Europe's share of overall European software downloads grew from 16% to 26%, while Northern Europe's declined from 36% to 23%. “This reminds us that the EU is a heterogeneous market with vast cultural and economic variances between its countries.
Some countries will grow in market share and others will decline,” said Anant.
For instance, the top three countries within each sub- region dominate that sub- region's software market. In Western Europe - Ger many, France and the Netherlands represent 82% of all download activity. In comparison 89% of download activity in Southern Europe comes from Italy, Spain and Portugal. Whilst 80% of Northern Europe's activity is dominated by the UK, Sweden and Norway.
Also 71% of Eastern Europe's download activity is dominated by Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Overall, however, Germany, the UK and France still dominate the European software industry, collectively representing 49% of all European software down- loads - but this is down from more than 60% in 2007. The decline in market share of these cou ntries occu rred while other European countries grew their market share. The message for software vendors competing in the global marketplace is signifi- cant, and must be accounted for when developing, packaging and marketing software. Flexera Software
www.flexerasoftware.com Fund for Parallel Computing Centre
The University of Westminster’s Centre for Parallel Computing in the School of Electronics and Computer Science has been awarded an EU Framework seven research grant of £308,000 for a Scientific Gateway- Based User Support (SCI-BUS) project. The EU grant brings the total external
research funding awarded to the Centre for Parallel Computing in the last twelve months to £956,000. SCI-BUS will create a platform for
providing seamless access to major computing, data and networking services in Europe. The research and technology that will be developed under the SCI-BUS project will benefit a variety of academic communities at the University. The project will develop eleven customised computer gateways, which will be tailored to meet the specific needs of user specialists in fields that include astrophysics, seismology, bioscience,
biomedicine and business process mod - elling applications. Professor Stephen Winter, Director of the
Centre for Parallel Computing at the University of Westminster said; “The SCI- BUS grant will enable us to develop essential gateway technology to connect a range of university communities to major distributed computing infrastructures (DCI’s) and services in Europe.
In addition to building user-specific gateways based on European-wide networks of computing clusters, grids and clouds, the project will provide operation and mainten - ance support to the new and existing user groups and also develop grid and cloud applications for research user communities. We will give special attention to standard - isation, quality control and above all, u sability technology issues by new users.” The University of Westminster
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