Ongoing Projects
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(1) |
Future Actions on Software and Services Based on Market Analysis of Market Evolution, Effects of International Factors, and Return on European Research Investment (FASSBINDER)
Call identifier FP6-2005-IST-5
Instrument: Specific support actions (SSA)
Project Duration: 24 months |
Objectives of the Project
The situation of the software and services industry in Europe, its market, future trends and evolution, as well as its research lines, cannot be conceived in an isolated way. The way this sector is evolving in United States, and the exponential growth of software production that is taking place in third countries like India or China, will be determining factors that will modify, positively or negatively, the evolution of European software businesses. Free and open source software is one of the main engines of the software industry. These factories should apply the common approach for software in order to demonstrate the industrial usability of the results. Furthermore, the enormous activity of software development taking place in third countries drive to the idea that FASSBINDER should go one step beyond and perform specific actions. FASSBINDER action is started with the following goals:
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Aimed at producing a strict, wider analysis of the past three and coming three years in software and IT services market, based on a technology-based segmentation |
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Once the analysis is performed, investigate a set of the segmented technologies, and determine the RoRI of each one |
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Perform a Market Watch centred on the effects of third countries in the European S&S economy, in terms of a) jobs, b) growth and c) competitiveness |
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Process RoRI's found, and the market data found inside and outside Europe, and produce a set of market conclusions and recommendations for research investment |
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Produce the FASSBINDER White Book that compiles all this information |
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Based on the data, elaborate a common strategy between European companies and software associations in third countries that enable both parties the evolution and synergy. |
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Reflect this strategy in a concrete FASSBINDER strategy agreement between main stakeholders of Europe and software associations in China and India. |
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Disseminate the results of the FASSBINDER project and White Book in the research funding public bodies: national European governments, European Commission, and private investors. |
The main outcome of the project will be the FASSBINDER White Book and the International strategy for a common approach on developing software and services supporting FP6 and contributing to FP7.
Project Partners
| Partner |
Organization Name |
Organization Intro |
Country |
| 1. Coordinator |
Atos Origin |
The first European IT services company, with an annual revenues of over Euro 5 billion and 47,000 staff in 50 countries. |
Spain |
| 2. Partner |
ENGINEERING Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. |
The leader of the Engineering Group consisting of 11 firms specialized in different IT services. |
Italy |
| 3. Partner |
Fraunhofer Institute for Operation und Automation |
Germany's leading organization of institute for applied research and the world biggest. |
Germany |
| 4. Partner |
Beijing Software Enterprise Advisory Center |
A foremost professional knowledge services provider in software and IT industry in China |
China |
| 5. Partner |
THALES |
A global electronics group serving professional equipment, systems and related services markets, a worldleader in high technology with a turnover of 10.6 billion Euros in 2003 |
France |
| 6. Partner |
India Institute of Science |
India's premier research Institute |
India |
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Key Activities
The FASSBINDER initiative will be designed and implemented within a time scale of 24 months. In order to achieve the objectives the work plan of 5 work packages has been designed, each driven by a leading partner and including a set of listed tasks with related deliverables and deadlines. The illustration of the tasks is given below:
Key activities include:
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Market analysis: a strict and wider analysis of the past three and coming three years in software and IT services market, based on a technology-based segmentation. It includes the analysis of ongoing activities national, European and international level within this environment and it will be complemented with the observation of current and emerging trend in software and services. |
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FASSBINDER White Book preparation: Analysis of evolution and potential of software and services in the Europe and third countries. |
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Workshops: During the project, the consortium will organize three workshops with the objectives of enhancing the dissemination of the common R&D strategy (White Book) and promote the cohesion between EU, China and India institutions. |
Role of BSEAC
BSEAC will act as a Chinese partner, mainly responsible for coordinating the dissemination efforts in China. In this, BSEAC will have a two folded role:
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Getting the attention of key decision makers in the industry. This will be performed mainly through direct connection with organizations and companies. |
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Raising the awareness of the general public about the project to increase the participation in the trials. This will be performed mainly through public advertisement and announcements. |
Besides, as BSEAC has a very strong research team, it will be actively involved in the research activities concerning China's software and IT industry.
(2) |
C@R: A Collaborative Platform for Working and Living in Rural Areas (Collaboration@Rural)
Call identifier FP6-2004-IST-5
Instrument: Integrated Project (IP)
Project Duration: 36 months
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Project Introduction
C@R aims to boost the introduction of Collaborative Working Environments (CWE) as key enablers catalyzing rural development. According to this strategic goal, C@R Integrated Project proposes a complete set of research activities and tasks which will identify, develop and validate technological responses to actual barriers jeopardizing the sustainable development in rural areas.
To achieve this prior objective C@R will research on the specification, development, test and validation of a powerful and flexible worker-centric collaborative platform that will significantly enhance the capabilities of rural inhabitants both @work and @life, thus leading to a better quality of life and a revalorisation of rural settings.
From the technical standpoint, C@R will divide the work in three layers: Collaborative Core Services (layer 1), Software Collaborative Tools (layer 2) and Rural Living Labs (layer 3).
A key piece of C@R model is the upperlayer middleware architecture, or C@RA, which combines in a synergic manner the layer 1 components according to orchestration high level capabilities resulting in a set of software tools. At layer 2, C@R will work on the definition of a user-centric Open Service Architecture (OSOA).
Layer 1 will encapsulate all core services and resources (networks, sensors, devices, software modules, localization sources, etc) in reusable software components and therefore, C@RA will be highly customizable in the sense of providing mechanisms to incorporate any proprietary or open solutions, and any standard.
C@R layer 3 will articulate Rural Living Labs (RLL) as innovative research instruments involving rural users. The RLL user-oriented methodology will guarantee to meet the highly specific rural users expectations and will provide mechanisms to gather technical requirements for the C@RA. Several innovative scenarios with an expected high impact on rural development have been selected to enable a later validation of the C@RA.
C@R will deepen on the impact of collaborative technologies in the rural economic and social backbones by means of a well structured methodology to assess the impact of the technologies developed on the indicators of rural developments and provide policy responses at national, European, and global levels.
The activities structure proposed above solves the development of rural-oriented collaborative technologies, but highly impact policy, dissemination and exploitation tasks and efforts are strongly needed to influence rural activities, and then to overcome the barriers of rural development.
C@R will keep a special consideration on the policy, dissemination and exploitation
dimensions as they constitute the actual repulsive for the rural development by means of the organization of networked activities, task forces, dissemination events, etc.
Project Partners
(3) |
Embedded Software Quality Assurance and Testing: Provision of Training & Technical Assistance to Chinese Software SMEs
Asia-Invest II Programme, Third Call for Proposals (2005)
Type of project: Asia-Invest TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
Project Duration: 24 months
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Project Summary
This project aims to engage in Knowledge Transfer on Embedded Software Quality Assurance (QA) & Testing Practices and Tools from Europe to China, as a prerequisite to building business relationships and opportunities that are founded on common values, standards and quality guarantees. Quality standards and compliance shall be the key building blocks to long-lasting business relationships between Chinese and European developers of embedded software. A 2 week Embedded Software QA and Testing Training Course will be delivered to 20 Chinese software SMEs with the potential for internationalising their business activities. Familiarisation with the Chinese market and an assessment of SME levels of expertise will underpin the delivered course, which will be adapted to meet the needs of the target companies (linguistic, technical, etc.). Course to be delivered in two 1-week installments. SME feedback and company evaluations will follow (via feedback questionnaires & on-site evaluations). A practical use case seminar with guest speakers from Europe will complete the training programme. Results will be consolidated, conclusions and outline business plans / prospects for future collaboration will be drawn up.
Project Partners
Partner |
Organization Name |
Organization Intro |
Country |
1. Coordinator |
Innovalia Association |
INNOVALIA is a group of companies based in Spain. Innovalia has an international presence. It has sound experience and expertise in international project management and specialised QA and Testing Division within their ICT Unit. |
Spain |
2. Partner |
Waterford Institute of Technology |
Waterford Institute of Technology is the largest of the Institutes of Technology outside Dublin in Ireland. It has cutting edge QA and Testing expertise of the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group within the Institute. |
Ireland |
3. Partner |
Beijing Software Industry Association |
Beijing Software Industry Association, as a social community with legal entity, was founded in 1986. It has about 600 members engaged in research, development, sales, service, education and management of software in Beijing, |
China |
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Key Activities
Key activities of the project include:
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Training: A 2-week course on Embedded Software QA and Testing is delivered to 20 Chinese Software SMEs in Beijing. The course implementation plan will be spread over two 1-week periods with three months in between, the purpose of which is to allow each Chinese SME time to digest 1 week's course content at a time, rather than immediately launching into a second week. |
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Company evaluations: This is a three-stage activity covering: 1) analysis of completed questionnaires on course feedback; 2) on-site evaluations of each Chinese SME; 3) final evaluation per company. |
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Practical Use Case Seminar: The intention of the practical use case seminars is to complete our training course by exposing the newly trained Chinese SMEs to practical experiences from European companies in the application of the Embedded Software QA and Testing practices, processes, technologies, methodologies, standards, etc. |
Role of BSIA
Coordination and dissemination are BSIA's main responsibilities in the project. BSIA's staff has rich experiences working in the cross-cultural environments, and has been actively involved in a number of large international projects. In close connection
with local newspapers, magazines, ICPs/websites, BSIA is particularly home at promoting the achievements of the project.
Major Milestones of the Project
Milestone |
Jan. 06 |
Jun. 06 |
Jul. 06 |
Oct. 06 |
Feb. 07 |
Oct. 07 |
Dec.07 |
Project Initiation |
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Training material development |
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Training |
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Company evaluation |
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Seminar |
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Project promotion |
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Project end |
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Beijing Software Enterprise Advisory Center 