Executive Summary

Programme Report 2004 (January - December 2004)

Previous Executive Summaries

This 2004 programme report summarises the results achieved in the period January 1st - December 31st, 2004. To complement this report, the password-protected area of our website holds up-to-date statistical information.

In what was a banner year for ITEA, 2004 saw the completion of ITEA’s mid-term assessment; the publication of the ITEA Report on Open Source Software and of the second edition of the ITEA Technology Roadmap for Software-Intensive Systems; a very successful (fifth) Symposium and equally successful seventh Call for Projects. Call 7 was the most successful so far and shows that interest in ITEA’s work and its achievements continues to grow. In addition, the EUREKA High-Level Group granted ITEA a continuation of the programme until the end of 2008. Preparing for the future, the ITEA Board decided to begin the process for launching a next generation programme in 2006. For the time being, this has been dubbed “ITEA-NEXT”.

The mid-term assessment

The mid-term assessment (MTA) – executed between April 2003 and March 2004 – was completed in the first semester of 2004 and presented during the joint ITEA Directors Committee (DC) and ITEA Board meeting on April 2nd, 2004. The executive summary is available at our website.

The report was very positive and made a total of 17 recommendations on how to proceed. The key recommendation was emphatic: “… to continue ITEA”.

ITEA Report on Open Source Software

Under the chairmanship of our former vice-chairman Eric Daclin, an ITEA expert group prepared a report on the current state of open source software; a hot and increasingly important issue. The ITEA Report on Open Source Software consists of a synopsis with appendices covering three major topics related to the software: the technical, economical and industrial aspects as well as the legal implications. The document was published on our website in February 2004.

ITEA Technology Readmap for Software-Intensive Systems, edition 2

Concluding a two-year strategic programme effort, involving more than 70 experts from across Europe and all constituencies, the second edition of the ITEA Technology Roadmap for Software-Intensive Systems was released on May 26th, 2004, at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2004) in Edinburgh (UK), the major international conference in this field.

The report maps out five major application domains, all of which are crucial to European competitiveness. Four main technology areas have been selected as clusters for several hundred fundamental technologies. The many detailed scenarios sketch a vision of the future, in which embedded and networked systems, with their related software technologies, play an increasingly important role.

We received many positive reactions. This is another indication that the Roadmap 2 core team did an excellent job. We are, of course, very grateful to this team. We also thank the public authorities for their financial support. The document can be downloaded free-of-charge from ITEA’s website.

The fifth Symposium:
ITEA and Emerging Trends - Our role in software-intensive systems

On Thursday October 7th and Friday October 8th, 275 of Europe’s leading software experts and corporate and academic policy makers from all over Europe met in the magnificent Casino de la Exposición in Seville, Spain. Their feedback (based on questionnaires) was very positive (scoring four on a scale of ax five). This year’s project exhibition was the biggest so far, with 35 projects represented.

Two ITEA Awards were presented. Our special guest, his Excellence Francisco Vallejo Serrano, Minister of Innovation, Science and Enterprise in the Andalusian Regional Government, presented the ITEA Achievement Award 2004 to the EAST-EEA project. The ITEA Excellence Award – this award has been presented on only one previous occasion, and is reserved to reward work of exceptional merit on contribution to the ITEA programme – was presented to the Roadmap 2 core team.

Project overview
ITEA’s current project portfolio (Calls 1-7) comprise 79 projects: 33 are completed, 25 are on-going and 21 are in their start-up phase. In addition, 18 projects have been stopped.

During 2004, 26 Project Reviews were conducted, all with very positive results.

In the mean time, the first project of the fifth Call is finished. The status of Call 5 in January 2005 is 13 projects representing 1,577 person-years. Taking into ccount a remaining small number of expected change requests, our forecast remains at around 1,500 person-years for Call 5. In Call 6, 15 projects were accepted and labelled, representing in total 2,265 person-years. Due to a limited amount of available funding, the number dropped in July 2004 to 12. The status in January 2005 is in the meantime 11 projects with two, to three, projects still in the danger zone.

The last three Calls (Calls 5-7) show that the willingness of industry (large industry as well as SMEs), universities and research labs to invest is around twice that which will be finally realised. This is a big concern to us as there is a competitive requirement behind each and every labelled project. In spite of the economic downturn, ITEA continues to experience growing interest among partners with increased willingness to participate in projects. Call 7 shows a labelled effort of 3,340 person-years!

Looking ahead to Call 8, the last Call in the current ITEA programme, a record amount of participants of the PO preparation meeting for the Call indicates a strong continuation of this very positive trend.

The amount of invested person-years in 2001 was 1,265. In 2002, the total effort was 1,080 person-years, which increased to 1,178 in 2003. The upward trend continued in 2004 with 1,231 person-years, bringing the total to close to the 2001 level.

Last Call for Projects and “ITEA-NEXT”

ITEA’s last Call for Projects (Call 8) was announced in December 2004, and opened February 3rd, 2005.

As ITEA is an 8-year programme, it will end formally in November 2006. In order to ensure that selected Call 8 projects can complete properly, an extension – until December 31st 2008 – of the current ITEA programme was requested and agreed upon by the EUREKA High Level Group meeting (October 27th, 2004).

In the meantime, the preparation of a new programme as follow-up to the current one has begun, with the working title “ITEA-NEXT”. The ITEA Board agreed on the proposed planning and started discussion and preparation of main lines of thinking. A project team was installed and started work. A first presentation of a draft white paper is planned for the EUREKA High Level Group (HLG) meeting end of June 2005 – the last meeting under the Dutch Chair. The final application for the successor of the ITEA cluster will be prepared for the HLG meeting, fall 2005. The EUREKA label is expected for late fall 2005 and the first Call of this new programme is planned to open in January 2006.

EUREKA & FP6

The European Commission announced the establishment of the European Technology Platforms (ETP) as a new instrument in FP7. For ITEA, the most important platform is the one relating to embedded systems, named ARTEMIS (Advanced Research and Technology for Embedded Intelligence & Systems). The clusters ITEA and MEDEA+ are members of the Steering Board. The ITEA Chairman, Vice-Chairman and Office Director participated in several working groups to support the establishment of the ETP.

Organisational issues

A number of organisational changes have taken place this year. In January 2004, Mr T. Tallgren of Nokia succeeded Mr M. Uusitalo in the Board Support Group and so left the Steering Group, where he was succeeded by Mr T. Saridakis.

At the end of June Mr Colaiemma, representing Italtel, succeeded Mr M. Pocaterra in the Steering Group.

At September 1, Mrs M. Heinen joined the ITEA Office secretariat and Mr A. Pery from Thomson succeeded Mr R. Capobianchi as ITEA Programme Co-ordinator.

Mr E. Lehmann of DaimlerChrysler left the Steering Group in January 2005 and was succeeded by Mr H. Singh.