eSchwechat: Background and "The Story so Far..."
Work has been done to turn 
Schwechat into a High-Tech ICT (Information and Communication Technology) location since as far back as 2002.
At that time, there were plans by the municipality to establish a technically oriented university of applied sciences (Fachhochschule). At the same time, a consortium – consisting of Innovation Consultancy (technology centre and regional development enterprise) and (former) STRABAG Project Development – was set up to find an optimal location for a technology centre within the ICT branch. In summer 2002, all those involved decided to combine these two projects and to concentrate on Schwechat. After the negative decision of the FH (University of Applied sciences) council for Schwechat in late 2002, the municipality charged Innovation Consultancy with establishing an institute of the Vienna University of Technology in Schwechat.
Summer 2003 saw a partnership sealed between the Schwechat municipality, Innovation Consultancy and Raiffeisen evolution project development (an initiative coming out of STRABAG project development) to inaugurate a new building in the Concorde Business Park as concorde technology center schwechat (concorde.tcs). After the installation of danubetec.net system by Innovation Consultancy (who run the technology centre) and the arrival of the RISE (Research Industrial Software Engineering) research group, a spin-off of the Vienna University of Technology, concorde.tcs was officially opened in November 2003. As part of this event, there was also the first presentation of the eSchwechat.at idea – presented by Innovation Consultancy to Schwechat’s mayor, Hannes Fazekas. The main idea behind this presentation was the creation of an "external town system" around the "internal technology centre system".
At the beginning of 2004 a new department of RISE was founded, Innovating Towns (INTO), which deals with the development of Information Society Technologies in Schwechat. In addition, as part of the brief from the municipality to develop new economic incentives for ICT businesses looking to move to Schwechat, they came up with much valuable input for the later eSchwechat.at programme.
In April 2004, there followed the first ICT location marketing activities with the start of a series of events, 
match.IT! (Matchmaking Austrian and international ICT companies), and talk.IT! (Information and discussion events on the latest ICT themes). Their professed aim: to position Schwechat as a meeting point for international ICT companies with special focus on Central and Eastern Europe. Due to the success of the initial event match.IT! "Austria/Slovakia", there were further events until the end of 2004 - match.IT! "IT-Security" and "Automotive IT / Traffic Telematics" as well as talk.IT! "Software Patent Guidelines" – all organised by Innovation Consultancy in cooperation with ITBeurope.
2004 also saw partnerships sealed between concorde.tcs and technology centres in Sweden (ComSoft International, Haninge and Solna), Italy (BIC – Sviluppo Italia Friuli Venezia Giulia, Trieste) and Slovenia (Tehnološki park Ljubljana and Štajerski tehnološki park, Maribor) as well as with the university of applied sciences FH campus Vienna. Alongside expansion of the RISE R&D group, several new firms moved to concorde.tcs: Mentor, LEM, ITBeurope and 3S Smart Sensor Systems.
The first half of 2005 was used for broad preparation work for eSchwechat.at, which was officially kicked off in August with the project management being handed over to Innovation Consultancy.
The emphasis here was on planning for the creation of an Early Stage Investment Company for founding ICT companies in Schwechat, preparation work for the airNET Schwechat project as well as starting a collaboration between Schwechat and the city of Vantaa (Finland) and between the two technology centres Technopolis Vantaa and concorde.tcs.
In the first half of 2005, the following companies moved in to concorde.tcs: Die Berater, Metrilog Data Services, Krennzgenial and Die Info Company. For marketing Schwechat as an ICT location, the following events were put with great success: match.IT! "Equity", "Open Source" and "Wireless" as well as talk.IT! "ICT Location Austria" and "Hotspots in IT – Finland, Canada, Sweden". In addition, IT Forum Schwechat was brought into being as a think tank and marketing platform for the Austrian ICT economy.