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2008 EuroPointless 100
November 28, 2008
Posted by: Glyn Moody
And the aim of this is precisely what?
PricewaterhouseCoopers, in association with the European National Software and Associations: Europe (ESA), France (AFDEL), UK (BASDA) and Pierre Audoin Consultants as technical advisors, is pleased to present the 2008 EuroSoftware100. This yearly publication includes a ranking of the Top European Software vendors:
Top 200 European Software Market
Top 100 France
Top 100 Germany
Top 100 UK
Does anyone *really* care which company came 153rd in the European software market, or 86th in the UK? Well, maybe the companies mentioned here:
Our ranking is complemented by an analysis and commentary on the future Software trends following interviews with key executives of the Top Global and European Software vendors (Léo Apotheker, co-CEO SAP AG; Bernard Charles, CEO Dassault Systèmes; Jean-Philippe Courtois, President Microsoft International; Pierre Gatignol, Executive President GL Trade; Patrick Bertrand, CEO Cegid Group; Marc Benioff, CEO Salesforce.com; Stephen Kelly, CEO Micro Focus; Corey Eaves, CIO/CTO Misys; Terry Sweeney, CEO RM; Chris Ouwinga, CEO Unit 4 Agresso; Thomas große Osterhues, Senior Manager Marketing Communications Beta Systems).
Perhaps some of them need a little bit of confidence-boosting in an attempt to convince themselves that they are still at the cutting edge, and not being left behind by all this tiresome free software stuff. What better than a really super-duper Top 100 list that proves they are...in the Top 100 of a super-duper list? Because everyone knows the metrics used for drawing up such lists are totally rigorous and meaningful.
Interestingly, all of the four “partners” of this whizzo scheme either have Microsoft as a member or customer (ESA, AFDEL, BASDA, Pierre Audoin Consultants), but open source companies are conspicuously thin on the ground. Just thought I'd mention it.
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About the author
Glyn Moody Glyn Moody's look at all levels of the enterprise open source stack. The blog will look at the organisations that are embracing open source, old and new alike (start-ups welcome), and the communities of users and developers that have formed around them (or not, as the case may be).
Comments received
Simon Phipps said on Friday, 28 November 2008
I note that one of the greatest software successes Europe has produced - OpenOffice.org - is not included.
Glyn Moody said on Friday, 28 November 2008
Indeed. The whole thing seems curious, to say the least.
Loxstarr said on Saturday, 29 November 2008
Guys,
15 years we are waiting for your oss revolution..Show us the market figures ? The great innovative products ? Open office ? This is a really poor Sun'stuff ... And don't worry I am sure the company will be in the rankings ;-)
Glyn Moody said on Sunday, 30 November 2008
@Loxstarr: the innovation is in the fact that it *is* open source, not it any extra software bling.
Loxstarr said on Sunday, 30 November 2008
Glyn,
An innovative product is a product that change practices for everybody, I don’t see any in the past ten years as oss. Open source is mainly innovative on two sides: the way to develop, and the way to sell software. That doesn’t make the products necessarily innovative…
Glyn Moody said on Sunday, 30 November 2008
Well, I think it *is* innovative, because it impacts the end-user, and "changes practices" as you say, in various concrete ways:
People can now routinely download free software to try it out - something that was/is rare in the proprietary world. People can switch suppliers in a way that was very hard before.
You can now scale software in a way that was unthinkable when you had to license code. Google, Facebook etc. would be unthinkable without free software.
Free software is easier to modify (or rather, makes it easier to pay a third-party to modify). Its open nature encourages addons - just look at the amazing Firefox addons ecosystem.
These kinds of innovation are orthogonal to the historical kind, but innovation often is....
Loxstarr said on Sunday, 30 November 2008
I agree that open source changed practices... in the proprietary world. And even IP software is now becoming downloadable and SaaS is changing end user habits.But the fact is that you can't imagine Google without IP protected algorythm. Moreover, you can be opened to a community without open source code,as Facebook, Salesforce or Apple do in a sense...
Glyn Moody said on Sunday, 30 November 2008
Well, there's Nutch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutch
And you can certainly build a community without open source, but my point is that it is prohibitively expensive to do it at great scale. Indeed, Microsoft is probably the only company that could afford it - for obvious reasons. Again, scale is an innovation, albeit a new kind of innovation.
Richard said on Monday, 01 December 2008
Opensource is really burning these so called "Consultants" in terms of value add. I think the Luddites were relatively succesful for a time!!