Melbourne has become known as the ‘hatching’ capital of Australia because of its strong research and development (R&D) base, supportive start-up business environment and the presence of established information, communication and technology (ICT) companies.
Many ICT firms are small start-ups by nature, developing software for application in areas such as building construction, workforce planning, tourism, financial services and legal services.
Historically, Melbourne has been ahead of the ICT curve: in 1984, the top-level country code, .au, was delegated to Robert Elz at the University of Melbourne. The University of Melbourne was also the first link in the Australian Academic Research Network (AARNET) connection to the internet via a satellite link to the University of Hawai'i in June 1989.
The city is home to six research-based universities that are making a significant contribution to the development of new technologies. Melbourne is also the headquarters of some ‘home grown’ established companies that are major industry players, such as Melbourne IT, a world leader in the market for the registration of domain names.
A 400teraFLOP supercomputer costing AU$100 million is currently being built at the University of Melbourne in a facility devoted to life sciences. With that performance it would rank number four on the Top500 supercomputer list as it stands today.
Australia is a mature marketplace that provides the base for a strong ICT products and services industry. Australia has a well-developed investment in backbone telecommunications infrastructure and is a leader in the use of wireless communication. Victoria supports innovation in ICT through Multimedia Victoria.
With its highly skilled and sophisticated workforce, Melbourne is well positioned to compete globally. Nationally, Victoria accounts for 31 per cent of all jobs in ICT, compared to 48 per cent of all jobs in computer hardware manufacturing, 41 per cent of all jobs in software engineering and 35 per cent of consulting jobs.
Greater Melbourne is home to the Australian headquarters of a number of international ICT companies, including NEC, Pacific Internet, Hewlett Packard, Fineos, Infosys and Agilent. Telstra's head office is within the municipality. Ericcson has recently completed and moved into new headquarters in Docklands.
The growing open source software movement is strongly represented in Melbourne through a variety of user groups and industry clusters including Open Source Victoria.
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