Results of the German Software Industry Survey 2012

The goal of the German Software Industry Survey is to investigate the current state of the German software industry on a yearly basis. Conclusions are made based on grounded data and empirical findings. We hope that this type of research will contribute to the work of both, practitioners and researchers. As a public research institution we keep our respondent’s data strictly confidential. We conduct the German Software Industry Survey in the context of the Software- Cluster2, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research3under grant “01IC10S05”. The authors take the responsibility for the contents. Two topics have been the main focus of this year’s survey: business models and competitive strategies of software firms. We collected and analyzed more than 500 responses which lead us to the following main conclusions: (1) German firms have a very positive outlook on the next five years, expecting to grow by almost 30% per year; (2) The nature of business models in the German software industry is multifaceted; (3) The German software sector is highly competitive.