The convergence gives us here a new opening to create new services. The US has done that successfully e.g. the internet created at one moment 100.000 jobs in a quarter of a year in New York alone. The key-action 4 tries to counterbalance that by forming European consortia of the relevant players, vendor industries, users, Research centres, transfer organisations etc. which provide critical mass. In the Information Society we have several raw materials. They come in form of commodity components, e.g. computer chips or software components.
Software is more than meets the eye.
In value and employment, software services like running a network for inter bank balances, and embedded systems are much bigger than office suites. New services emerging from the convergence of Telecom networks, media and the IT industry provide an important opportunity for increased European competitiveness. The real challenge is to get new value out of the ability for software and information to travel on networks. Europe is strong in this area. Its key ability is engineering of software and services.