Europe is a very fragmented market for almost anything. Most established companies have found ways to manage the many languages, cultures, tastes, behaviours, differences in legislation and other characteristics that makes Europe such a difficult and expensive place to do business.
What about the software industry?
The big players like SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe and Symantec have their operations established with local representation and resources. But all the small and medium seized software companies with fantastic customer value propositions are struggling to get their products to flow across the European borders.
In spite of many years of European political cooperation we are still light years from a One European Market situation.
This is a shame, as we are missing tons of business opportunities. Where are those German, British, Spanish, French, Italian etc. management consultants, who can assist foreign software companies in getting their products into the local markets? Europe will never become One Market in the same sense as the USA. In order to give the European software industry the market and growth opportunities “at home” that it required to compete on the global markets, we must make it easier for them to cross the inter-European borders.
