Annette Schavan, the Federal Minister of Education and Research, announced the winners of the second round of the “Spitzencluster” competition on Tuesday. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will be supporting the five winners over a period of five years with funds of up to 200 million euros. Europe’s largest software cluster, “Softwareinnovationen für das digitale Unternehmen”, was one of the winners. This cluster is known as the Silicone Valley of Europe and includes the centers in Darmstadt, Kaiserslautern, Karlsruhe, Saarbrücken and Walldorf. Six projects are to be set up, during which the cluster itself (management, networking, international presence, training and further education, exploitation) as well as the technological and methodical research and development of software solutions for digital companies are to be driven forward. These projects alone will require investments of more than 80 million euros.

Further objectives of the software cluster include the training of 5,000 specialists over a period of 5 years, the foundation of 30 companies within the cluster’s core area, and attracting leading foreign companies to settle in the cluster region. With the support of the BMBF, the partners would like to turn Europe’s largest software cluster into a technology center of global significance. The decision of the Federal Government will strengthen the software industry in Germany. Current studies forecast that 430,000 new jobs will be created in the software industry by the year 2030. Software is already considered one of the key technologies for increasing added value and productivity.

The ministry hopes to strengthen innovation policy in Germany with this competition. Partners from the science and business sectors will be able to turn their ideas into new products and services more quickly while making better use of their existing strengths. The largest German corporate software manufacturers (IDS Scheer AG, SAP AG and Software AG) are represented in the software cluster in addition to more than 350 small and medium sized companies from the corporate software sector, including IMC AG, Seeburger AG, proAlpha Software AG and intelligent views gmbh.

The three leading computer science research centers (DFKI, Fraunhofer, FZI) and the renowned computer science faculties of the TU Darmstadt (which is represented by the LOEWE Center at CASED), the Kaiserslautern University of Technology, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Saarland are also bringing their expertise in the areas of research, development and training into the cluster. Over the long term, this software cluster wants to become the leading global technology center for emergent software for digital companies. The region is already known as the “Silicon Valley“ of Europe.

Emergent software combines a wide range of components from different manufacturers in a dynamic and flexible manner, in order to fulfill the highly complex requirements of global companies. This software can adapt itself dynamically to the changing requirements of the market as well as the business environment, supports complex and dynamic corporate networks, and will enable innovative services to be provided via the Internet of the future. The principle behind emergent software is viewed as a key innovation for digital companies and the Internet of the future.

The objective is to transform normal companies, which previously only used IT as a tool for supporting their traditional processes, into completely digital companies. In the future, individual economies as well as the prosperity of industrial and service provider companies will depend on the ability of such institutions to position themselves as digital companies.