While software companies do good business, small service providers have sensitive failures.
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The Association of Austrian Software Industry (VÖSI) sees many small companies in the IT and software industry facing the end of the corona crisis. Small companies would suffer more than corporations and other large companies.
Around two thirds of the sector in Austria consists of one-person companies (EPU) who live from project business or outsourcing – which has come to a complete standstill in some industries such as tourism or in the catering and event sector.
“In the worst case, a quarter to a third of the micro-firms could go bankrupt due to the corona crisis,” VÖSI President Peter Lieber said in a broadcast on Monday. The EPU would be the first to lose orders in difficult economic times.
The project business thrives on close personal cooperation, real meetings and constant exchange. Projects would be postponed, new orders would have been delayed. IT is a supportive, supportive industry. If the economy is doing badly, the IT industry will also lose its customers, said Lieber.
Big benefit
On the other hand, global giants such as Microsoft, Google, SAP or large domestic software companies such as Tricentis, BMD or Fabasoft would have benefited from the crisis.
Overall, however, the domestic software industry is one of the winners of the corona crisis. Because the switch to home office and the state investment premium of 14 percent would have provided a boost to digitization and would have given the industry an overall increase in sales of seven to eight percent in 2020, estimates Lieber. In the record year 2019, according to “Computerwelt”, the largest 1,000 domestic ICT companies with almost 93,000 employees generated around 26.4 billion euros.
The VÖSI President is optimistic for 2021: “We hope that the situation will ease.” In addition to IT security, which has often been neglected during the rapid conversion to home office and remote work, the topics of cloud conversion, automation, process optimization and the use of AI will also play a major role in 2021.
