The set-up of a software engineering research infrastructure of the 2010s

Software engineering is one of the few disciplines, which continue to lack university "clinics" for software (c.f., hospitals in the medical education). There is no facility specifically designed to enable research in software development that is realistic and open, and where measurement data can freely be shared for verification or other purposes. We can keep up debating the need for setting up such an infrastructure or just go ahead and start building it. Software Factory is an initiative that we have had in mind for many years. Shortly put, the Software Factory is a strategic investment to a new infrastructure supporting software engineering research, education and entrepreneurship globally. The reference implementation of the Factory is now in place and it is currently expanding to its targeted global networked capacity of up to 150 software engineers by the end of 2011. Strikingly the Software Factory of today is not intellectually following the earlier undertakings with the same name stemming back in 1980s in Japan or in the US. Rather, it represents the software development of the 2010s. Early results are more than promising. A new company is about to be launched, fresh and value-oriented research results are quickly emerging, and students find it a place to gain valuable experience.