Changed on 18/12/2019
Some software programs designed by Inria research teams and their partners lead to the set-up of consortia by InriaSoft. The aim is to develop, distribute and establish large-scale software programs, helping to create a support network for users.
InriaSoft’s role is to enhance the impact of software production by encouraging its use by external partners, whether in academia or in the world of industry.
Its duties involve...
- Putting together consortia on software programs with their roots in research in order to give a sense of structure to the way in which researchers and users cooperate with each other.
- Organising software development in order to promote the participation of users, ensuring their needs are taken into account.
- Giving software longevity in order to guarantee long-term maintenance for users.
- Promoting the emergence of start-ups dedicated to the use of software programs and the specific services resulting from them.
Research in the field of digital science leads both to the production of scientific publications and, as is often the case, the development of software programs. Some of these reach a level of technological maturity enabling them to be integrated and used in a range of different ways within digital sciences. This takes them beyond the initial stage of research tools and academic proofs of concept, becoming, within the worlds of academia and industry, genuine tools for the development of new fields of research, new prototypes and new products, leading to new uses.
Consortia help promote industrialisation, while providing established technical support and boosting the future development of these software programs. They do this by organising communities of developers and users, by funding the necessary engineering costs for software support and by coordinating these communities. These are flexible structures made up of figures from the worlds of academia and industry, which are able to determine their own operating rules. Each consortium funds the recruitment of one or more engineers to get things off the ground. The engineers then work in close proximity to the research teams generating each software program.