It is a very welcome sight that the Estonian ICT companies have achieved real action after years of regular declarations about being in need for co-operation and even being ready for it. The Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications has been supporting the idea of co-operation between enterprises for a relatively long time, trying to promote it and help find ways for channelling similar interests into specific joint activities.
Finally the efforts have born fruit and I think there is an actual role of ITL in this event. True, the co-operation is initially starting not in production, but in marketing. But I believe that once the first step is made, others will follow.
While most of the ICT enterprises have been able to cope independently in the domestic market, foreign markets will require joint activities more than ever. Whether we want it or not, Estonian companies are too small, not focussed enough and have too little resources for any decent activities in export markets. Here, co-operation, distribution of tasks, specialisation and commitment are the magic words that can affect the competitiveness of the enterprises of the sector.
ITL will try to continue supporting this process in the future. We are currently implementing a cluster incubator idea which is rather unique in the Estonian cluster programme. A cluster incubator would be a set of so-called “soft” measures for establishing prerequisites for co-operation between enterprises, for creation of specific clusters and for starting these clusters up. Naturally, other companies will be co-operating and making up clusters, but ITL would be able to help these companies with brains and brawn to establish the co-operation mechanisms, background systems and other necessary means. And this is not our only activity in the field of co-operation.
In AS Datel, one of the establishing parties of the NPO ICT Demo Centre, we have reached an understanding that although we have a multitude of interesting and useful solutions, especially in the field of geoinformation systems (but not only there), our opportunities for introducing and demonstrating it all are limited. What’s more, often the benefits and strong sides of the systems developed by us become much more visible in joint functioning with other related systems. Until now it has been quite a feat to organise such joint demonstrations of several systems. As a result, we all suffered, and not only we the producers, but also and often much more our potential clients.
It just wasn’t possible to make them see the integration effect. When establishing the Demo Centre, we paid much attention to aspects like this and to the synergy of acting together. We believe that the Demo Centre will be a popular place where our public sector institutions can see and understand the joint functioning of the systems, business organisations can look for solution ideas for their problems and our foreign visitors can be introduced to the good Estonian ICT solutions. I hope more and more members will join the Demo Centre, so that our permanent exhibition will become more and more comprehensive and influential.
Dear visitors of the Demo Centre! If you don’t know exactly what kind of ICT solutions the Estonian companies of the field have created, which of these and how they can be used to solve the problems you are facing, who and where to contact under these topics, then ICT Demo Centre is the place for finding answers to questions like these.
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