Image Science

The IMAGIC software was a spin-off from scientific research and was not originally a goal in itself. Thus, in contrast to a-priori commercial software products, the original costs of the development of the package need not flow back from the revenues of the software sales. What needs to be financed by the revenues are mainly the costs of user-support, new developments, and the general maintenance of the huge (1,000,000 lines of source code) software package. In other words what needs to be financed by the revenues are primarily the salaries of the software specialists supporting the customers and maintaining the software system.

Image processing has become a key factor in the successful operation of research groups in the field of electron microscopy. The manpower expenses associated with such computer and software maintaining oriented activities, however, have become too high for the average research group. A shared support and programming resource could - to a certain content - replace local programming capacities. Above all it can provide continuity and structure in software development which is often not granted in the individual research groups.

For these reasons Image Science has announced its SHARED RESOURCES program in which this support becomes more explicitly what one pays for, a program which can best be described as: support and software by subscription.