Software industry

The software industry and software industry is to create and distribute the population of all enterprises that software. In a broader sense also companies that provide services, in later life cycles of software offering (such as installation and configuration of the software, user training ), the software industry are attributed. The software industry is characterized by high growth, thus gaining the overall economy, not only in Germany in importance. In Germany, with the IT Cluster Rhine -Main -Neckar one of the world's largest IT and software cluster located, also is the software industry in Germany the subject of several broad research studies.

History

Before the 1960s, computers were programmed either by the customer or by the few computer seller in the free trade of that time such as UNIVAC or IBM. The first company was founded to produce software products and services, 1955 was the Computer Usage Company. The software industry expanded in the early 1960s, almost exactly after the date on which computer first arrived on the mass market. Universities, government and corporate customers managed a far-reaching demand for software. Many of the programs were written at this time in the operation itself by full-time programmer teams. Some were in solidarity vain distributed between the users of a particular machine. Others were made ​​on a commercial basis and in this line of business engaged companies such as Computer Sciences Corporation, founded in 1959, began to grow. Computer manufacturers began at this time to also to connect their operating system software and programming environments with their machines so that software and hardware became a unit. IBM then decided in 1969 under pressure from the ongoing antitrust litigation software and related services to be decoupled from the hardware leasing contracts ( " unbundling " ) and for software copyright protection in connection with license agreements provide ( End User License Agreement ).

When Digital Equipment Corporation brought a relatively inexpensive microcomputers on the market, the use of computers, many more companies and universities has been made possible world; This development provided the foundation of a great wave of innovation which manifested itself in the creation and development of new advanced programming languages ​​and methodologies. New software has been developed for the microcomputer and others, including IBM, quickly followed DECs model, which resulted, inter alia, in the manufacture of the IBM AS400.

The industry grew very fast mid-1970s with the advent of the personal computer, which brought the computing power of the computer to the working table of the office force. In the following years, a growing market for computer games, software applications and utilities developed. DOS, Microsoft's first operating system product, was the dominant operating system of its time.

In the early years of the 21st century came with software as a service (SaaS ) to a new successful business model for the hosting of software; similar business models had existed before. For the provider enterprise SaaS reduces the worry about software piracy, as the only access via the web exists and is loaded by definition no customer software on the end user's PC.

Market Overview

The software industry is a young industry and has a high proportion of young companies. While the market barriers are low and the entry of new firms favor a strong consolidation takes place. Thus, the software industry is characterized by one of the highest volumes of corporate takeovers.

According to market research firm International Data Corporation, sales of the global software industry amounted to 2008 230 billion U.S. dollars. Some of the world's largest companies are attributable directly (eg Microsoft) or indirectly (eg Apple ) of the software industry.

Properties

The software industry has characteristics that distinguish it from other industries:

  • Software is a digital asset that can be reproduced at low cost. This also means that copyrights can be difficult to control (software piracy) leads.
  • The software industry is highly internationalized through the easy to distribute software and characterized by global competition. There is little home advantage on national markets; For example, to generate SAP and Software AG about 85 % of their revenues from exports.
  • " Winner-takes -it -all" markets with a variety of corporate takeovers by network effects.

Compliance with these special properties is the basic elements of the strategies of software vendors, software ecosystems and networks of companies.

Classification

The software providers can be classified according to different criteria:

  • Software vendors in the narrow sense - developing software. Divisible by type of software in terms of: Close to the hardware: System Software: among other operating systems
  • System-related software: as middleware and database systems
  • Application software: eg, word processors or software for accounting
  • Commercial ( " enterprise software " )
  • Private
  • Individual software: custom software for a particular client company. That branch is growing particularly strongly in the Indian software industry.
  • ( smooth transition by customizing the standard software )
  • Standard Software: The development takes place for standardized needs of potential users. A survey of 489 CIOs German 2010 showed that the proportion of companies that mainly use standard software ( 62.9 % of respondents) will tend to increase.
Utility software Digital goods Digital Object Identifier
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