Digitalization is concerned with a fundamental shift in value delivery to customers from transactional to continuous. For R&D this requires adopting processes such as DevOps and continuous deployment. Systems engineering companies using platforms need to adjust their ways of working and be cognisant of the role of the ecosystem surrounding them to capitalize on this transformation. The keynote talk will discuss these developments and provide industrial examples from Software Center, a collaboration between 17 large, international companies and five universities with the intent of accelerating the digital transformation of the European software intensive industry.

Long-lived software is a challenge. This was seen very clearly a couple of years ago in the “US COBOL crisis”, but the reasons are less clearly understood, and are worth exploring. The speaker works in Computer Algebra, where “younger” systems are 30-40 years old, and the algorithmic kernel of SageMath, the newest major system, is actually 55 years old, and the people who can debug it are in single figures. More recently, very substantial retooling was required to enable Line 14, the driverless line, of the Paris Métro to be extended. Having reviewed these cases, the speaker will make some tentative suggestions for the management of long-lived software.

Software has emerged as the most critical component in the product engineering ecosystem. It is at the core of making products smarter, delivering customer centric experience and driving more effective operations. This presentation will address how industry can ensure success as they embark on their software driven transformation journey. We also share some typical cross-industry use cases of next generation software enabled technologies.