 figures may hide the impact of strong vertical industries in the global software market. By a vertical software industry, we refer to the primary and secondary software industry organizations producing software for the needs of a vertical industry, such as construction or financial industry. For example, banks and other financial institutions alone represent close to 30% of the software market (see Table 1) with their 180 billion euros annual purchases from the primary software industry. In other words, the main volume of the primary software industry sales recorded as the software market comes from the large vertical businesses. This means that the financial industry and other strong verticals drive new software development of the primary SWI to the directions beneficial for these industries. In addition, several enterprises within the financial industry have internal software Table 1 Primary software industry revenue as a part of the ICT industry. Amounts are rounded to billions of euros (EITO 2004; OECD 20021) Global Europe Financial industry Software products IT services Equipment Communication service ICT total OECD IT Outlook 2004 Available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/22/18/37620123.pdf. See also "Measuring the Information Economy 2002" available at http://www.oecd.org/document/5/0,3343,en_2649_34449_2765701_1_1_1_1,00.html Vertical Software Industries development activity, which is not visible in the market figures representing only the purchases from the primary software industry enterprises. Another interesting observation from Table 1 is that in general the ratio of software product spending versus IT service spending is 1 to 2, while in the financial industry it is 1 to 8. This reflects an emphasis on tailored systems and process consulting as compared to a general tendency to use more standard product packages. Figure 1 represents the overall settings, in which the primary and the secondary software enterprises interact. Primary software industry companies, placed on the left in the figure, run s