National Software Strategy for Scotland : The Way Forward : Productisation
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National Software Strategy for Scotland : The Way Forward : Productisation |
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It is vital to make sure that Scotland retains and fully exploits its ability to develop software products if future growth is to be sustained. Scotland’s software product firms gravitate towards service provision as a low risk approach to growth. At the industry level, this reduces the overall value-added performance and profitability of Scotland’s software firms.
One key barrier to product development - clearly identified through our discussions with Scottish software firms - is that the local industry base (for any given firm) is relatively small, making it difficult to find appropriate test sites for software. This situation is further exacerbated by apparent unwillingness of local industry to participate as test sites even though this often entails economic benefit (ie free product use).
Therefore, this initiative would provide encouragement to organisations in any sector in Scotland that would participate in testing and proving Scottish software products; for example beta testing.
Obtaining a test site for a software product is an extremely important step in its development. There is currently a scarcity of appropriate and willing test sites within Scotland and this initiative would act to reduce this barrier. The credibility enjoyed by firms who have identified successful test sites provides a strong boost to marketing the product more broadly.
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