Using European funding to drive research excellence

As a European company with international reach, it is essential that Cezanne Software has the broadest possible perspective on the business demands of its customers – and of how these can be met using new and evolving technologies and approaches.

One of the ways in which we do this is by taking advantage of the funding for collaborative research that is available to organisations based in the European Union.

In this article we talk to Gianni Sebastiano, Finance Director and Silverio Petruzzellis, Product Research Manager of Cezanne Software about some of the initiatives that Cezanne has been involved in.

Why is R&D funding available in Europe?
Gianni Sebastiano: Having European research policies and implementing European research programmes is a legal and political obligation resulting from the Amsterdam treaty. The treaty acknowledged that research and technological development (RTD) is an essential activity for industrialised countries, leading to increased competitiveness in the global market and higher employment as well as supporting other areas, such as environmental protection.

It also recognised that high level research is increasingly complex and interdisciplinary and is, as result, increasingly costly. Few research teams, companies or even countries have the mix of skills and resources available to be truly effective, especially on a pan-European basis.

The European funding model aims to create a true “European Research Area” in which researchers and professionals can act together to pursue scientific excellence in Europe.

What is the RTD Framework programme?
Gianni Sebastiano: The Framework programme (FP) is the main instrument for research funding in Europe, and reflects a target set by the European Council of Barcelona to increase European research efforts to 3% of EU GDP.

The European Commission establishes the scientific and technological objectives of the Framework programme. The European Parliament then approves the funding framework programme for both the public and private sector.

The overall funding is managed at three different levels: directly by the European Commission through the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development (RTD); by national governments, who add their own resources; and by the regional governments.

Each one covers a five-year period, with one year’s overlap in between.

Why is Cezanne Software involved in European funding initiatives?
Gianni Sebastiano: Our success as a company is based on our ability to offer our customers innovative solutions that support their critical business processes. To continually develop and deliver new and improved solutions demands a high level of professionalism and an attitude that I believe needs to combine creativity, innovation and out-of-the box thinking with networking and interpersonal skills.

By participating in European funding initiatives we benefit from being constantly in touch with universities and research institutions across Europe, allowing us to share ideas and expertise. We have a particularly strong relationship with the Polytechnic and University of Bari and with many other European Universities and Research Centres, such as the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, the University of Bremen or Cranfield University, to mention just a few.

Silverio Petruzzellis: I also believe that to be “sustainable” any R&D department should be searching for funding opportunities and a network of partners to work with. Collaborative projects provide a very real opportunity to strengthen our scientific and technological base and contributes to our ability to deliver excellence in IT as well as help to stimulate innovation.

How much funding is available at European level?
Gianni Sebastiano: The 7^th European Framework Program, which was launched last January, has reserved a total amount of 73,215 million Euro for the period 2007 to 2013. Most of that fund will be spent on R&D projects covering a wide range of scientific and technological priorities, such as: health and food; agriculture and biotechnology; information and communication technology; nanosciences; energy and security.


Which projects do you think have contributed most to the Cezanne products?
Silverio Petruzzellis: Each of the projects we have worked on has represented a significant milestone in our R&D activities. The LORE project, for example, was designed to explore the possibility of combining competency management with knowledge management, while in the RODEO project we experimented with a new approach to competency assessment based on complexity theory. Another interesting research project was Team Advisor, where we integrated a personalisation and recommendation engine into our Performance Management module in order to provide advice to managers about the most appropriate rewards to assign to employees. The EPM project should also be mentioned, since it formed the basis of the most recent release of our Cezanne Enterprise Suite – version 7.

If we look at current activities; JUMP (Just-In-Time Employee Performance Support System) is a project Cezanne is presently running in the area of advanced IT support to knowledge workers. JUMP aims to create a learning platform that can take advantage of the many information sources already available through a company’s existing information systems.
Its purpose is to create a semantic-based (rather than a data-driven) connection between different information systems, from ERP and HRMS to DMS and LMS. We want to be able to provide personalised and contextualised information to knowledge workers while they are doing non-routine, knowledge-intensive activities. JUMP will fully exploit web services technology to deliver targeted information on-demand.

You mentioned web services. What about the Software as a Service paradigm? Do you think SaaS is an interesting area for research?
Silverio Petruzzellis: Definitely. As you know, SaaS is a new software application delivery model that has been made possible by the widespread adoption of the Internet. Customers do not pay to own the software, but just to access specific functionality delivered through the Internet in the form of web services. The SaaS model is taking off fast – especially in the USA – but there are still many areas associated with the delivery of SaaS applications that need further development. Network security, performance and application segmentation are all areas currently subject to investigation. In addition, the possibility to integrate services coming from different providers to create industry-specific business applications is giving birth to new business models that could facilitate multi-vendor offerings and collaboration environments for the implementation of a new service-oriented software paradigm.

The PowerBiz project, funded by Regione Puglia, that Cezanne is currently managing with some other innovative software companies, is exploring the possibility of creating a new inter-enterprise BPM (Business Process Management) platform that could act as a marketplace for business applications and web services. A sustainable business model that is beneficial for software producers, process consultants and system integrators is one of the key goal of the project, and we're looking at SaaS to find new ideas for the software industry.

These all sound exciting initiatives. But what is the cost?
Gianni Sebastiano: I’d like to talk about the benefits rather than the cost. For Cezanne Software it is essential that we have a continuous program of R&D. We can’t rely on revenue from the current release of our software forever. While our customers are using the current product, we need to be designing and researching for at least the next two releases.

Cezanne has already participated in almost twenty projects in fields relating to human capital, company organisation and management models – all of which have been based on leading-edge technologies.

By taking advantage of funded research we’re able to reduce the cost – and therefore the risk – to the business of some of our key R&D activities. And, because we have the opportunity to work with other leaders in our field from industry and universitie, the skills of our own researchers, developers and technical engineers are dramatically increased.