According the the Austin Statesman, Oracle has recently opened a 500,00 square foot corporate campus near downtown Austin complete with an on-site cafe, training center, game rooms and a sports field. Oracle is added to the list of tech giants with outposts in Austin including, Facebook, Google, Dell Technologies, Samsung, Apple, and Amazon. Merck is also moving in and the city is a top 20 finalist for Amazon's second headquarters. Much of the credit for luring the technology industry to town is accredited to landing the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp., (MCC) the nation’s first for-profit computer industry research and development consortium.
The MCC didn’t create Austin’s tech sector, which had arrived 16 years earlier when IBM planted some of the first technology roots in Austin by opening up a plant north of the city, and later when Dell Technologies was born in the 1980s and grew independently of MCC’s presence. But MCC’s arrival gave Austin new standing in the U.S. technology community. The facility was one of the first manifestations of the technology hub Austin would become.
“The MCC was an inflection point for Austin’s evolution,” said David Gibson, a senior research scientist at the University of Texas′ IC² Institute and co-author of “R&D Collaboration on Trial,” a book about the MCC. “People on the West and East Coasts didn’t think of Austin too much before it won the MCC. All of a sudden, people were saying, ‘what’s happening here?’” Laura Eldredge, a UT student and University System research analyst at the time, remembers the anticipation those at the system’s office felt when Austin won the competition. Landing the MCC “planted a flag in Austin and Texas as a technology center,” said Eldredge, 61. “It felt like a new era was opening up right before me.”
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