Alfonso Fuggetta, CEO of CEFRIEL

ICT can be embedded in any device and can also play a decisive role for triggering a development cycle.
In the last months, one of the most discussed topics has been the Italian economic decline. The list of reasons is long and it is not easy to summarize them in few lines. Different analyses are available and their conclusions show different moods: someone talks about a deep and almost irreversible crisis, someone else underlines that the trend factors of the current economic situation are common all over Europe, but signs of improvement are becoming visible.
Beyond any analysis and the emphasis given to the reasons, in Italy there are certainly severe structural problems. Many economic indicators show that the Italian country is not in a healthy condition.
The most worrying ones are the level of international trade (even in sectors, like tourism, in which Italy has always held a leading position), the trade balance, the energy and high technology dependence, the competitiveness level, the dimension and innovation capacity of our companies, the main market and industrial sectors.
Even the experts that consider the current problems as temporary and pertaining to a common economic situation will notice that certain characteristics of the so called Italy System are not new and the problems have been existing for a long time.
In spite of all pessimists, over the last decade the quality of life has been improving. Italy has the highest percentage of mobile phones users and the percentage of home owners is still increasing.
Italian Style is our flagship and the imitation attempts are spreading, even in the Far East, where culture and local traditions should be rather different from ours. Italian language, although spoken in a single nation, is more and more studied abroad as a key to understand and appreciate our culture, history and social environment.
From a certain point of view, there is undoubtedly an increasing appreciation of Italy and its heritage of brains, knowledge and wellness.
But there are some factors making the situation particularly difficult. Our country is not in a temporary downturn situation that physiologically can occur in any country, organization or structure. There are strong and unquestionable signs of change that our nation has to cope with.
Some signs are directly related to the international situation and are, under many points of view, common to other European countries:

• With Euro adoption, Italian firms cannot any longer rely on monetary depreciation to improve their competitiveness on international markets.
• The energy problem is more and more emerging as one of the most critical. The production peak from fossil sources has been reached and Italy totally depends on foreign procurements.
• Globalization and the new role of previously "sleeping" continents (starting from "Cindia") open new opportunities, new markets and new trade channels for our products. On the other hand, as it is widely known, they also introduce a formidable potential of low cost manpower qualified and resolute brains. Moreover, the demografic figures of those countries, once called emerging or third world, reveal that more and more they will be the drivers of the market.

Therefore Italy needs to innovate its industrial vocation, developing new products and services. In this process ICT can play a decisive role making "intelligent" any good.
A car, for instance, integrates a computer to provide navigation, entertainment, safety and vehicle reliability services.
In a Digital Home lighting, home appliances and multimedia devices can be connected through a smart network.
ICT can also provide an answer to the environmental protection problem, with, for instance, the technology for the hybrid car vehicle and the ultra-light airplane. This is what I mean for pervasive ICT: it does not only add new functions to an ordinary product, but it also makes possible to create new added value services. Smart products that enable smart services.
Using ICT in a pervasive way requires high level of expertise and the capability to analyse the company's needs so to identify effective and viable solutions.
This is the challenge already endorsed by some Italian companies, among whom is CEFRIEL, so to contribute to the development and the growth of our country.