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I welcome you very cordially to Potsdam, the capital of the State of Brandenburg and at Hasso Plattner Ventures which is very close to HPI. This place is a kind of Mekka for IT-specialists.

With full justification the incubator with its core and Hasso Plattner Institute are seen as forges of the future elites of IT-science and business.

It is the concept of the incubator to provide for the IT-startups a new and unique environment which provides financial support, consultancy and logistical support on equal levels. The purpose of these efforts is to close the decisive gap between the technical maturity of IT-innovations and their introduction on the market.

The role of HPI consists in providing excellent university education and research. Many young people are eager to study at HPI and having graduated at HPI makes it a lot easier to find rewarding jobs.

Education, science and business form a trinity and their task is to exercise a marked impetus on the economic development of Brandenburg. Science and business cooperate more closely and develop central networks. In these networks come together potentials which are distributed over various locations and players and these networks focus on performance, clearly defined targets and competences.

At least this is what we want. In reality business and science too often still meet as strangers who speak different languages. Yet, exceptions prove the rule: Hasso Plattner Institute is the exemplary model for public private partnership. The founder, Potsdam University and the State of Brandenburg work hand in hand for creating a modern landscape of technology and science.

Growth and science, education and employment will require each other in future. We need closer links and a close cooperation between science, research and business for enhancing the transfer of technology into practice.

This applies in particular for East Germany since our institutions of higher education and research are often relatively young. They still have to work hard for gaining a reputation while institutions in the West are well known and respected because they have been working at it for decades.

Rather few of our companies do their own research. Most of them don't do it either because they are too small and cannot afford it, others because it is done in the West.
For this reason Brandenburg wants to strengthen regional networks and research cooperation in strategically important fields using existing regional research potentials. For institutions of higher education and research this also offers an opportunity to strengthen their cooperation for the benefit of regional business and local research.

With pleasure and satisfaction we heard that the recent study produced by the working group software quality and further education in cooperation with Potsdam University confirms that the region of Berlin and Brandenburg is very competitive in the worlds most dynamic sector of economy, i.e. in information technology. No other region has such a density of companies covering all the important parts of this sector.

This applies in particular for the IT branch. In Berlin and Brandenburg we have currently 12,000 companies of the communications and media industry with approximately 150,000 jobs. In IT and telecommunications alone we have 3,700 companies with 38,000 employees. These figures are very impressive and we must build on them. The number of software companies increased by 8.3 percent since 1998. In addition to important companies, decision makers and producers our region attracts more than 22,000 students in 44 courses of media and telecommunications. This is an enormous creative potential and source for dynamic development.

Also with this in mind I can congratulate you for having held your annual conference this year in our region. This meeting which is organized by ASQF is one of the most important expert events for software quality. During the past days you have been working very hard, listening to more than 50 presentations and having joined many discussions. I do hope that your results will soon be transferred into practice.

I have been informed that next year you will hold a double conference together with EuroSPI. We thank you for advancing so much trust in us and we assure you that we will organize this conference with great competence.

Let me close by wishing you a pleasant evening.