Software & Data

The software industry is overwhelmed by new business models, new distribution methods, open source, new production models, as well as the avalanche of data and AI.

Customers’ expectations are changing, and their demands are increasing in an increasingly international competition. The consumption of services is now quantitative, by users who want to be more and more “data-driven”. Simultaneously, data and the democratization of Machine Learning allows the creation of new strategic functionalities for the user, thus rewriting the maps of the competitive landscape.

The upheaval caused by new customer expectations is accompanied by major changes in software production. As agile development and continuous deployment become the norm, the software must now adapt its structure by porting it online through the cloud and adopt a more flexible business model than the traditional license, ranging from subscription (“SaaS”) to Freemium.

This dual transformation of software and production suddenly puts a strain on labor markets around the 3 new technical challenges: capturing, organizing and exploiting data. Software publishers then must make significant recruitment efforts in an international talent war.

The scale of these changes and their implications for the individual  provoke a new economic tension, forcing institutions to mobilize to defend the interests of their region. Europe is leading the privacy protection policy with the adoption in 2018 of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), while China is pursuing a more central and national policy towards this new virtual gold. These regulations are additional constraints for software publishers.