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BUSINESS & INNOVATION
TOPIC
DIGITAL AGENDA
The economy is on the threshold of a fourth
petition for leadership in technology. The
industrial revolution. Driven by the Internet,
Federal Government is promoting and ac-
through a digital transformation process the
tively shaping digital change, and to this
real and virtual worlds are becoming in-
end has established a Digital Agenda cover-
creasingly intertwined and together form an
ing seven fields for action. It embraces all
Internet of Things. Digitalisation repre-
areas of society: government, industry, cul-
sents an historic change for industry and
ture, education and science. Digital change
the service economy. The collective term
is regarded not as purely technological, but
Industry 4.0 embraces solutions, processes
as a social process that addresses questions
and technologies and describes the exten-
of freedom and democracy, down to the pro-
sive use of IT and a high degree of system
tection of individuals.
networking in factories. Many German
companies are fast moving down the path to
In the medium term, the Digital Agenda is
Industry 4.0, which in particular advances
intended to make Germany the leading
digitalisation in the areas of production
provider of Industry 4.0 and the number-
engineering and logistics. Overall, industry
one digital growth country in Europe. In
is expecting ever intense international com-
positive scenarios, studies estimate additional economic growth potential from
Industry 4.0 of between 200 and 425 billion
NUMBER
euros by 2025. As a cross-cutting technology, the information and communications
600
Internet service providers and other
organisations from 60 countries are
linked up to DE-CIX. In terms of data
throughput, the Internet hub in Frankfurt am Main is the largest in the world.
In 2015 data throughput reached the
4-Terabit-per-second mark for the first
time. After Marseille (France), Palermo
(Italy) and Dallas (USA), the DE-CIX
operator is now setting up a hub in
Istanbul (Turkey).
→ de-cix.net
technology (ICT) sector plays a key role
here. Today as much as 23 percent of growth
in productivity can be traced to investment
in ICT. 900,000 employees generate sales of
228 billion euros, making Germany the
fourth-largest market after the USA, Japan
and China, and the largest ICT market in
Europe.
The development of the digital infrastructure, in particular of broadband Internet
access, is regarded as one of the key tasks to
drive digitalisation. The aim is to create a