Cluster Information and Communication

Where is the largest think tank of the world-famous Bell Labs outside the USA? Where do Bill Gates' toughest competitors come from? In which region was the MP3 Internet standard invented?

The most important industrial sector in the Nuremberg Metropolitan Region is information and communications technology with approximately 110,000 employees in over 7,000 firms. Communications technology, software solutions using Fokus Open Source, automation, medicine, business applications and e-government are some of the important growth areas.

Nuremberg is one of the leading bases of cell telephony in Europe. Network suppliers and operators, as well as research specialists develop chips, soft- and hardware for the mobile phone business.

Talking about Open Source: the Linux world looks towards the SUSE Linux laboratories belonging to Novell. Their developers are among the guiding lights of the alternative operating system. It is no coincidence that Nuremberg has already been dubbed Europe's Linux Valley.

"Best brains"? In Germany, the most engineers per head of population work here. The region takes third place in Europe as regards the number of patent applications in the communications technology sector. "Think tanks", like the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, fall on fruitful soil. IIS has, in the meantime, become not only the largest Fraunhofer Institute employing 480 scientists, but also the most profitable. The institute itself is little known, but everyone has heard of what they developed: the MP3 format conquered the world from Franconia.

What, however, is so special about the Metropolitan Region's research landscape? Is it active networks like the IT Cluster Bamberg, IT@O in Bayreuth, F.I.T. in Forchheim, KEGOM in Nuremberg or MECK in Würzburg, that initiate and support interdisciplinary projects in the region? Or is it the motivating atmosphere in purpose-built innovation centers, like the Research Factory or the Linux Business Campus for young companies, that contributes to the businessman's choice of the Nuremberg Metropolitan Region as a location? Maybe it is the climate of innovation characterized by successful cooperation between industry and the administration with universities and colleges in and around Nuremberg: most enterprises rely on the upcoming generation of scientists and technicians that are graduates of the Universities of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Bamberg and Bayreuth, the Colleges of Applied Sciences in Amberg, Ansbach, Coburg, Hof and Nuremberg, branches of the Heinrich Hertz Institute or the Max Planck Research Group for Optics, Information and Photonics.

Probably it is a combination of all these factors that makes it so worthwhile to found a company for research and development in the Nuremberg Metropolitan Region, a focus of information technology.

• Origin of MP3 (Fraunhofer IIS, Erlangen)
• Main emphasis
  - Software for medicine and industry
  - Open Source
  - Telecommunications
  - IT Services
• Trade Fairs / Congresses
  - e_procure
  - CRM-expo
  - it-sa (it-security-Fair)
  - embedded world
  - SMT / HYBRID / PACKAGING
  - Open Source Meets Business
• Research infrastructure
  - Fraunhofer Institutes IIS and IISB
  - 4 universities
  - 5 universities of applied sciences