ICT companies and research institutions in Norway’s capital region are eager to recruite skilled labour from abroad. Over the past decade, many new ICT companies have been established in Oslo. Some of the companies are global leaders within their field and software companies like Opera, FAST and Trolltech have between 20 and 30 nationalities in their workforce, having attracted people with exceptional skills from all over the world.

Studies show that foreign researchers choose Norway due to its excellent working conditions and first-rate research communities. Along with its highly developed infrastructure and optimal career opportunities, most research and development work in industry is closely linked with universities and colleges – which makes for a dynamic learning situation. Other important reasons for choosing Norway are a generally high standard of living. Norway is also known to have an attractive way of organizing the workplace that includes all employees as a part of the value chain.

A centre for research and education in ICT

With close to 3,000 people involved in research and development, the Gaustadbekk Valley in Oslo is one of Norway’s largest centres of research and education in ICT. The Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo (UiO) serves about 2,000 students each year, including 100 PhD students. Together with the Norwegian Computing Centre and SINTEF, they make up an important ICT research environment. A new informatics building is under construction, and according to Morten Dæhlen, Head of Department of Informatics at the UiO, this building will further strengthen the Gaustadbekk Valley’s position as Norway’s most important growth area within technology-based research and education.

Other important ICT knowledge hubs in the Oslo region are found at Kjeller, Horten, Halden and, not least, Fornebu, where international actors such as Telenor and the Simula Research Laboratory are located.

At Simula more than 100 scientists and engineers are employed. Simula conducts basic research on networks and distributed systems, scientific computing and software engineering. Recently, Simula was awarded status as a Norwegian Centre of Excellence in Biomedical Computing. Professor Magne Jørgensen at Simula was also ranked as the most productive software engineering researcher in the world, by The Journal of Systems and Software. The ranking was based on scientific production between 2001 and 2005, and included 3,918 software engineering researchers worldwide. Jørgensen states that generous funding is essential to having a long-term focus on a research problem: "There is probably no other place in the world with such a combination of generous state funding, long-term research focus and an efficient organizational structure."

The Simula School of Research and Innovation AS (The Simula School) is an integrated part of Simula Research Laboratory AS. The Simula School educates graduate university students in close cooperation with Norwegian universities.