Today, information processing plays an integral role in all kinds of technical and organizational processes and a wide range of products.
These processes and products are increasingly characterized by the inclusion of software that essentially enhances their functionality. Software and programmability deeply influence their usage, innovative enhancement, techniques to develop and improve them, and how they are produced. Thus, software-intensive systems constitute a particular breed of information processing. Embedded software-intensive systems are part of technical devices, thus they are embedded into physical or technical processes. Some of today’s embedded information-processing systems are among the most complex technical constructions being built. The industry producing
such systems has become significant from both the infrastructure and economic points of view.
The development and production of information-processing systems is based on software support systems such as software tools or product data repositories.
Software and systems engineering is thus the key discipline for constructing information-processing systems. In particular, software and systems engineering addresses issues such as requirements engineering, architectural design, implementation, reliability engineering, and long-term maintenance.
All these issues are important not only from an economic perspective, but also with respect to safety and reliability in many areas of our everyday lives. Our critical infrastructures heavily depend on our ability to develop and operate safe and reliable software-intensive
systems. Economically, our ability to be successful in a global market critically depends on building software-intensive systems at reasonable cost and with high reliability.
