Bavaria’s ICT sector has been one of the largest and most innovative since the sector’s inceptions. The sector today is comprised of some 20,000 companies. Employing more than 380,000 people, these companies include everything from start-ups and SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) to world-spanning technology giants. The companies’ range of activities is equally diverse, and includes the development, manufacturing, provision and distribution of the industry’s entire entire spectrum of products and services.
The main areas of operation of Bavaria’s ICT companies are:

• software development and distribution
• hardware development and distribution
• microelectronics
• telecommunications
• software and hardware embedded in products
• software-based processes used in development, manufacturing, and B2B, B2B and G2C (government to citizen) operations and services.

The wish to work with and profit from Bavaria’s world-class infrastructure of innovation and growth-conducive operating conditions has led a large number of international ICT companies to set up their European headquarters and subsidiaries in the state. Active in the field of development, service provision and application, these leaders include Accenture, Adobe, Alcatel Lucent, Altran, ALTEK, Apple, BT, Cisco Systems, Environmental Systems Research Institute, IBM, Infor Global Solutions, Intel, Motorola, NXP Semiconductors, O2, Olympus, Oracle, SAP, Sun, Suse Novell, Telefonica and Texas Instruments. After conducting worldwide searches, both Google and Microsoft selected Bavaria to be the site of their R & D centers.
These ‘internationals’ are joined by a large number of ‘home-growns’. With many of them now acting on a global scale and having large-sized workforces and sales, they include Cirquent, DATEV, EADS, Elektrobit, ESG, euro engineering, FJH, IABG, Infineon, Kabel Deutschland, Mensch und Maschine Software, msg systems, MVI Group, Nemetschek, P+Z Engineering, sd&m, Siemens, SoftM and VOLKE.

Bavaria’s ICT sector: special features
Bavaria’s ICT companies are active in each of the links forming the sector’s chain of value added. This breadth of activity is accompanied by the maintaining of close working relationships with the industries applying the sector’s products and services:
Automotive engineering, aerospace engineering, mechatronics, medical technologies, financial services, the media, industrial engineering, energy and environmental technologies, and telematics. These close relationships with fast-developing industries ensure Bavaria-based ICT companies of operating in a sustainedly growing market comprised of innovative partners which are leaders in nearly all areas of business activity.

German companies invest an average of some €2000 per IT employee. The corresponding figure for greater Munich is one quarter higher--€2500. This finding is contained in the Investment Atlas issued in October 2008 by Sage Software. The first of its kind in Germany, the study investigated patterns of ICT expenditure by SMEs.

A large pool of high-qualified employees
A steady and all-state supply of highly-qualified employees—this is the product of the range of courses of vocational and occupational education provided on a Bavaria and industry-wide basis, and of the degree programs offered by Bavaria’s institutions of higher education. Graduating from them each year are 4,400 students (a figure which has been rising over the past few years). The range of these degree programs is equally large, covering such specialized majors as biology and economics-use IT, computational engineering, mathematics, statistics, precision mechanics, electronic engineering and information provision systems.

This supply of domestically-educated personnel is complemented by the many people looking to move to the state, so as to partake of its proverbially high quality of life.

Attractive conditions for IT research
The path-breaking innovations produced by Bavaria’s institutes of basic (including those of the Max-Planck society) and applied research (including those of the Fraunhofer society) have made Bavaria one of the best known and sought after venues of international scientific endeavor and enterprise. To maintain this position, the support provided by the state government to Bavaria’s research community will be substantially increased over the next few years. One product of this will be the founding of up to five new Fraunhofer institutes. These will beef up the research conducted outside universities in Bavaria. Other support for the creation and development of ICT-based innovations is forthcoming from Bavaria’s Alliance for Research, which also helps scientists staffing the state’s institutions of higher education secure research funds provided by regional, national and European-level bodies.

Bavaria’s high-ranked system of vocational and occupational education turns out a steady stream of highly qualified, innovation-minded ICT personnel. This pro-innovation and pro-ICT approach is also manifested by the state’s research community, which is comprised of such large-scale research institutes as those of the Fraunhofer and Helmholtz societies, and of those maintained by the state’s institutions of higher education. All these produce innovations advancing ICT, and all form part of the state-facilitated and supported networks linking them with the state’s ICT companies.

Forming part of Bavaria’s Alliance for Innovation, BICC-NET (Bavarian Information and Communication Technologies Cluster) links the states’ companies, research institutes and public sector institutions into dedicated networks. BICCNET’s brief is formulate and select the objects of R & D consortia, to form the interfaces with sectors of application and with other clusters, and to create a Bavaria-encompassing platform of joint ICT endeavor. In doing such, BICC-NET works with the Paris region’s System@tic initiative. The topics being investigated by the cluster include embedded systems, financial-use IT, geodata, multi-format contents, internationalization, and the supporting of initiatives, networks and providers on the regional level as well as those involving ICT education and professional associations.
These regional networks devote themselves to building local ICT communities, and, as their names indicate, taking on specialized subjects. These networks include Eastern Bavaria’s IT Security Cluster Initiative, which is based in an IT incubation center in Regensburg.

Trade fairs and congresses
The authorities in Munich and Nuremberg stage throughout the year important ICT-related trade fairs and other events. The former include Munich’s it-sa, Electronica and Communication World, and Nuremberg’s Embedded World and e-procure.

There’s more to Bavaria’s ICT sector than just Munich, important though the metropolitan region is on the national and international levels. Each of Bavaria’s regions is home to companies and universities with market-making portfolios of ICT innovations and products and services.

In terms of total workforce, Munich’s ICT sector is the largest in Germany and number two in Europe. The sector is a world leader in the fields of digital technologies, mobile communication and software. Many of these innovations and many of the above employees are products of Munich’s top-ranked institutions of higher education: TUM (Technical University Munich), the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU), the University of Applied Sciences, and the University of the Federal Armed Forces. In 2006, TUM and LMU were named by the federal government “universities of excellence”, along with a further facility. Start-ups flock to the Garching-based GATE and the Munich-based MTZ. These incubation centers provide them with the services enabling the companies to hit the ground running. Dedicated associations in the metropolitan area include the Munich Network, Munich’s Circle of Support for IT and the Media, the Working Circle of Munich’s IT Entrepreneurs, and ROSIK e.V. in Rosenheim.

The Nuremberg metropolitan region and the surrounding area of Franconia are among the world’s leaders in medical and production technologies. Companies flock to become part of these clusters, and to work with such renowned research facilities as the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, and as the region’s institutions of higher education. Their specialties include technical and economics-use IT. Located in Erlangen is the IGZ incubation center. In addition to providing start-ups with services, the center puts them in touch with such proactive networks as Netzwerk Nordbayern (Network for Northern Bavaria) and as NIK. This Nuremberg-based initiative for the communications industry serves as the platform for the region’s ICT industry. Also headquartered in the city: the pan-European Open Source Business Foundation. Upper and Lower Franconia’s ICT clusters are served by agencies and projects intermeshing sector activities by forging working relationships among their players.

The very strong growth recorded over the past few years by the Swabian region’s ICT sector is attributable to the quality of the degree programs offered by the University of Augsburg, and by the universities of applied sciences in Augsburg, Kempten and Neu-Ulm, to the high-demand specialties of local ICT companies (automation technologies, robots and environmental technologies), to the linkage efforts of ‘kit e.V.’ (the local ICT initiative), and to aiti-park. This incubation and technology center is located on kit’s premises.

The hub of the Upper Palatinate’s rapidly developing ICT industry is Regensburg. Some 30% of the ICT start-ups founded in Bavaria over the past few years were from the region. The causes: the large number of ICT specialists graduating from the University of Regensburg and from the universities of applied sciences in Regensburg and Amberg-Weiden. Another cause: the excellence of the manager training and business development services provided by Regensburg’s IT-Speicher incubation center. Held on a regular basis, the Working Circle for IT Security’s meetings are attended by automotive and security companies. Regensburg.it serves as the platform for the Upper Palatinate’s ICT sector.

Lower Bavaria’s ICT sector has two great, inter-related assets. Its institutions of higher education—including the University of Passau and the universities of applied sciences in Landshut and Deggendorf—turn out the IT applications wanted and needed by the powerful local automotive (BMW maintains a large-sized plant in Dingolfing) and logistics industries. Ties between the technology development, educational and business communities are forged by the IT Forum Lower Bavaria.

Packages of financing configured to meet the needs of innovative SMEs and other state ICT companies are provided by the technology development programs maintained by LfA Förderbank Bayern and by Bavaria’s ministry of economic affairs, infrastructure, transport and technology.

Financing, expert counsel and other forms of support are available from a range of private and public-private initiatives, including business plan seminars (staged, for instance, by Netzwerk Nordbayern). The state’s chambers of commerce and industry provide entrepreneurs with training.

Bavaria’s universities and research institutes form part of networks open to new members.

„Key Technologies in Bavaria“ is a databank containing entries on Bavaria’s ICT companies.