This article, written (in Italian) by Luca Tremolada, was originally posted on Il Sole 24 Ore.

Let’s do the math. According to statistics from the Economist Business Unit, software throughout the European Union contributes 1 billion euros to GDP. According to data, the UK, France, and Germany remain the largest software markets in the EU, contributing over 60 percent of the total GDP of the EU direct software industry. The bulk of these ICT investments goes to major Californian digital platforms, including cloud computing providers such as Microsoft, Google, IBM or Oracle. The Europe of software is represented by big names such as Sap, Dassault Systemes or for Italy by Zucchetti, TeamSystems, Var Group, Reply, but their numbers are more contained. So much so that the Old Continent’s dependence on the cloud can be considered from a strategic point of view a weakness.

“Let’s not forget that many key and revolutionary technologies are rooted in Europe, from cellular technology to Linux or MP3”, explains Lanfranco Marasso (Smart City Director, Engineering). The co-investment of European funds and private resources that led to the development of the open source platform FIWARE, now adopted in the U.S. as well as in Japan and India, shows that the model is the right one to support these skills with which we can compete at the highest level. The FIWARE Global Summit 2019 has just taken place in Genoa. It is an independent open source platform with its origin based in a program of European collaboration between the public and private sectors that has collected over 500 million investments. “When the financing was over – explains Lanfranco Marasso – there were two possibilities: either put up the shutters or trust an open source community and build a non-profit foundation.”

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