Generative AI: Powerful path to growth for software companies in Europe

As we navigate the threshold of a bold new era with generative AI, the excitement is palpable – not least for software companies in Europe. From content and code generation (including debugging and testing), personalisation, and back-office task optimisation to virtual assistants, decision-making, and far beyond, generative AI is a revolutionary technology that is beginning to drive considerable value. It is also a strategic imperative for software developers to help power the next stage of their customers’ growth.

McKinsey estimates that 75 percent of the value generative AI could deliver will come from four key areas: customer operations; marketing and sales; software engineering; research and development (R&D). The direct positive impact on software engineering productivity could range from 20 percent to 45 percent annually. This would be achieved through a reduction in the time spent on activities like generating initial code drafts, generating documentation, analysing the root-cause of issues, or creating new systems design.

Leveraging the Cloud to Seize the Generative AI Opportunity

At AWS, we are committed to helping software companies realise the full potential of cloud computing as an enabler for the fast adoption of generative AI. Thousands of software businesses in Europe are using AWS today to accelerate innovation, increase operational efficiencies, and reduce costs while getting the highest levels of security and protection. Cloud technology is crucial to create and power the Foundational Models (FMs), like Large Language Models (LLMs), and augment these models with your data, to build unique generative AI applications at scale. With Amazon Bedrock, we offer our customers the choice to use diverse high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, Stability AI, and Amazon through a single API, along with a broad set of capabilities for building generative AI applications with security, privacy, and responsible AI.

Developers are telling us that they’re spending the majority of their time on repetitive and tedious tasks and cookie-cutter code. To help solve this challenge, we recently announced the general availability of Amazon Q, the most capable generative AI-powered assistant for accelerating software development and leveraging companies’ internal data. Amazon Q Developer assists developers and IT professionals with all of their tasks—from coding, testing, and upgrading applications, to troubleshooting, performing security scanning and fixes, and optimising AWS resources. This empowers developers to spend less time on repetitive and tedious coding and more time on creating unique experiences for their end users while being able to deploy faster.

Continual Evolution of Use Cases

Generative AI is already making an impact on software companies in Europe. InfoCert, whose Legalmail solution enables businesses to verify the authenticity and legal validity of their email exchanges, is using Amazon Bedrock to streamline access to innovative document and email processing features, and paving the way for more efficient machine learning (ML) integrations. InfoCert expects to reduce financial overhead by 80 percent for startup, development, and configuration costs when onboarding new customers.

Another example is Showpad, a software company recognised for crafting leading sales and marketing enablement solutions. It is leveraging AI services from AWS to analyse vast amounts of data and use the insights to generate personalised content that addresses each buyer’s unique needs and preferences. The results are telling, Showpad’s customers are already seeing a 2.2-times uplift in the return on investment for their marketing content.

AWS Commitment to Europe

Our commitment to democratising access to generative AI builds on our longstanding support of Europe’s digital future through our investments in infrastructure, jobs, skills development, and education in local communities. We recently announced plans to invest €15.7 billion in Spain in the AWS Europe (Spain) Region, which will support an estimated 17,500 full-time equivalent jobs in local businesses on an annual average basis.

For public sector organisations and customers in highly regulated industries, we are launching the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, a new independent cloud for Europe, by the end of 2025 with a planned investment of €7.8 billion. To help customers and partners plan their deployments to the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, we have published the roadmap of initial services.

AWS local teams work to empower software companies across Europe through various programs aimed at supporting their international expansion, such as AWS Global Passport. We are also focused on accelerating modernisation and fostering SaaS adoption through programs like AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) and the dedicated EMEA SaaS Factory.

To learn more about how software companies can harness generative AI to accelerate growth, download ebook, and listen to this podcast.