Software quality and cost issues will be the focus of a newly formed industry council featuring heavyweights such as IBM and SAP.The BPM Forum, which promotes business performance management techniques and technologies, on Tuesday announced formation of the Software Economics Council, to address issues impacting the effectiveness and value of software.Formed in response to the growing dependency of organizations on software to run their operations and drive business performance, the council will communicate virtually and in-person. Noting that software quality remains a sore point, the council will discuss issues such as the gaps between softward design and delivery, software lifecycle management, open source technologies and strategies to elevate the value of software with licensed, open source and on-demand models. The leadership committee for the council consists of executives from a wide range of software companies. Included are: Adobe Systems, Aztec Software, Azul Systems, BEA Systems, Borland Software, BroadvVision, Cognizant, Deloitte, Dendrite International, EDS, IBM, Informatica, Leverage Software, Mercury, Novell, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Santeon, SAP, Siebel Systems and Sybase.Absent from the list are Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. But these two vendors will be invited to participate, said Shirish Netke, chief strategy officer for Aztec Software and chairman of the council’s leadership committee. “They have not been intentionally excluded from this,” Netke said. Current participants, however, have demonstrated more of an active role in dealing with the issues pertinent to the council, he said. Both Sun and Microsoft are members of the BPM Forum.The council is being referred to by the acronym, SECO. Software Development