For a long time United Kingdom has been the market leader in IT related products and services ‘database packaging’, ‘visual reality’ and multimedia applications based on networks. The UK software sector is highly concentrated. The top twenty companies account for an important market share. Other than these large companies, about 130,000 smaller software companies operate the market. The top players in the UK software and services market are Accenture, Capita, Computacenter, Computer Associates, CSC, EDS, Fujitsu Services, HP, IBM, LOgicaCMG, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun and Synstar. Both European and US companies software companies and second-tier providers in the market are active and well established.

Many companies are located in a forty-mile long corridor extending from London in a westerly direction along the M4 motorway. There are many software engineers present in the UK market who are well trained by the British Universities. All of them look for a job or start their own company, seeking for some niche market opportunities. Universities work closely together with the companies supported by the British government.

The UK is known as one of the most innovative and advanced locations within this sector. A number of software and computing services companies can be found in the following localities, for example, Silicon Glen (Central Belt of Scotland), Silicon Fen (Cambridgeshire), Thames Valley/M$ Corridor, Greater Manchester and the Midlands. Other UK areas are rapidly developing clusters of software companies.

Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, has one of its most important research centres in Cambridge which is an area known as Silicon Fen for its thriving technology industry. IBM, another of the world’s largest software companies, also undertakes wide-ranging research and development at several UK sites. Hewlett-Packard, yet another major worldwide software company has a large laboratory in the UK, sited in Bristol.

A possible way of finding a foreign partner is the UK Trade Invest partnering service, refer to the websites mentioned below.