CERCLE DIPLOMATIQUE - issue 01/2017

L’AUTRICHE INFORMATION & COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY
Vitale
Start-up-Szene.
Das Start-up Festival Pioneers
ist immer wieder voll von
neuen jungen IKT-Betrieben.
Vital start-up scene. Austria‘s
vital start-up landscape is full
of young ICT companies.
companies with an outstanding R&D-quota – like
Infineon in Carinthia (some 25 percent) or the producer
of electronic steering equipment
Bernecker+Rainer in Upper Austria (around 14 percent)
– and has counted some 130 highly specialised
firms in the areas of Microelectronics, Embedded
Systems and Smart Systems with up to 85,000 experts
employed and overall sales in Austria of at least 15
billion Euros.
Their backbones certainly consist of the nearly
100 Austrian research and development institutions
with around 4,000 mainly academic personal which
are located around the three university centers in Vienna,
Graz and Linz (including the near village of
Hagenberg, the home of computer sciences). In Carinthia,
mainly in Klagenfurt and Villach, some
R&D actors have emerged as well, ”but compared to
Linz and Graz, they are lacking a critical mass“, the
EBS study remarks. All these academic hotspots act
like gravitation centers magically pulling the ICT
companies under their umbrellas. Most of them are
producers of electronic equipment and components,
many are first class software developers and some 30
of them may even be called „Hidden Champions“ –
meaning that the companies are world market leaders
in their industry niches, which nevertheless often
amount to billion-dollar-markets.
In the course of specialisation, a couple of regional
clusters have emerged which are defined by intense
cooperation and a steady flow of academic experts
from the near universities and their R&D
agencies.
Upper and Lower Austria, for instance, are dominated
by two mechatronic clusters which concentrate
on device and equipment manufacturing technology
and are full of component suppliers. Also, the IT
cluster in Hagenberg near Linz has been successful
in building up an international reputation in the areas
of Industry 4.0, IT security, new forms of mobility
and digital business. In Carinthia, there are two main
clusters, one for IT security, E-commerce and Open
Source Solutions, the other is known as „Silicon
Alps“ because of its high-end components for mobiles
or cars. In Styria, the RFID hotspot is playing an
ever more important role. If you have a contactless
credit card, its ”Radio Frequency Identification“ chip
may well originate from there. Finally, the IT cluster
in Tyrol is dealing with solutions in the areas of tourism
and healthcare, IT security and has a focus on
networked systems and Industry 4.0. And in Vienna,
which is no wonder at all, you will find all of the cluster
topics in an outstanding concentration.
This is one of the reasons, why the German technology
giant Siemens has located its corporate technology
center for CEE in Austria. ”We not only value
the high level of technological competence but the
good and matured relations to the target markets in
Central Eastern Europe as well“, says Harald Loos,
the head of this department. ”Naturally these are important
pre-requisites for high-tech projects and
new market opportunities in Eastern Europe.” Maybe
there is no better verdict about Austrian ICT
scene than the one of TTTech-manager Stefan Poledna,
the leading aeronautics- and space technology
company: “Austria is a top location for R&D in the
field of embedded computing“, he says. ”The proximity
to important educational facilities enables TT-
Tech to interest and internationally deploy highly
qualified employees.“ In short: No trace of death at
level 1, but success on any level of ICT.
Raumfahrt-Technologie.
ITK-Unternehmen von
Siemens bis TTTech stehen für
den Hightech-Ruf Österreichs.
Space technology made in
Austria is provided by
companies like Siemens or
TTTech, only to name two.
PHOTOS: MICHAEL HOLMES, SEBASTIAN-KREUZBERGER, NASA/JPL-CALTECH (3)
INDUSTRIE +
FORSCHUNG =
ARBEIT +
WOHLSTAND.
Wissen ist Österreichs größtes Kapital. Die Übersetzung in Produkte
und Dienstleistungen schafft Arbeitsplätze der Zukunft.
Foto: dieindustrie.at/Mathias Kniepeiss
78 Cercle Diplomatique 1/2017
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