The 2001 Census 30 collected information on household access to the Internet. Households in the Auckland and Wellington regions had the highest rates of Internet access at nearly 9 in 20. Less than a quarter of households in the Gisborne and West Coast regions had access to the Internet. Like many other countries, New Zealand set up its telecommunications infrastructure around major cities. While their infrastructure has expanded to include many smaller cities and regions, the rural areas are still lacking access. New Zealand currently has a policy proposed to reach some of these rural areas, thus making the entire country "wired" for access.
The map above shows three major areas of IT activity. These are not the only three areas of IT activity in New Zealand, but are the ones with the most activity at this time. These activities include ecommerce, university technology programs, and government IT centralization. Auckland is by far the most heavily-centralized IT area of the nation, housing a successful and growing technology park, AUT Technology Park. Wellington is the capital of New Zealand where many government activities originate, and Christchurch hosts Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, which is fast becoming a leader in producing IT professionals.
CLUSTERS & TECHNOLOGY PARKS
While New Zealand doesn't appear to have any IT clusters, it does have a well-developed technology park. AUT Technology Park was established by Auckland University of Technology in January 2001 to foster entrepreneurial activity. The Park currently hosts 29 tenants, including start-ups, established businesses and university research projects or businesses run by members of the park's advisory board. The tenants include 31, 32:
• s Parochus: develops wireless applications• s Zenago: content management and web design• s Analog Media: specializes in web-based applications• s Websol: has built online collaborative platforms for AUT and the Wellington College of Education• s San Francisco-based GeoVector: develops positioning technology for users of mobile devices• s Club IT: services for IT professionals• s New River: new video technologies for marketing research• s Urban Voyage: 3D visualization solutions• s Artificial Intelligence Centre (University project): has built an autonomous mobile robot
The park, located in James Fletcher House in Penrose, provides professional corporate office space, mentoring, shared services, administration and procurement support and subsidized occupancy to its incubated business.
Business services include internet access, email hosting, SMTP mail, storage, network printing, backup and recovery, shared resources, collaboration on documents and security. A 10-tier pricing plan was also developed, meaning businesses could select a mixture of applications, support and services to suit. As part of its incubation programme, AUT provides some services free to start-ups on a case by case basis. 31
Business Incubators 33
"Business incubators are focused on helping fledgling ventures to develop. They provide support in the form of mentoring, physical environment, shared services and resources and, in some cases, finance.
Typically, incubators assist businesses that are at the early stages of development - start-up companies. Such companies may still be in the product development phase, may not have entered the market and typically have yet to receive external investment.
The incubators help individuals who have a great idea or concept but may lack the business expertise needed to make it succeed.
Most business incubators offer offices, and shared resources and services. For start-up companies this can mean the difference between a home office and credible, professional premises. The costs of services such as internet connections, telecommunications and administration are shared - and therefore usually reduced. Some incubators also offer financial support, sometimes in return for an equity stake."
AUT Technology Park -- Incubator?
Some articles describe AUT Technology Park as a business incubator. If this is true, this author's not quite sure what the difference is between an incubator and a technology park. They appear to overlap in function, services, and purpose.
According to the New Zealand Herald, AUT Technology Park "acts as an incubator for innovative small and medium-sized companies." 33 They go on in another article to describe an agreement between three institutions: "AUT Technology Park, Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology and Canterbury Innovation Incubator have signed an agreement to share resources. The agreement means businesses traveling away from their incubator base can take advantage of office facilities in a partner incubator." 34