Invest in Côte d’Azur

An ideal setting for all types of challenges

With its prestigious location, top-class international real estate, attractive lifestyle, multicultural population and cutting-edge infrastructure, the Côte d’Azur is the ideal place to make strategic business decisions, create your business showcase, or base your southern European headquarters.

The region’s large number of highly qualified IT personnel has made it a favorite location for hi-tech companies to establish their R&D operations. The Côte d’Azur has a long tradition of welcoming large numbers of visitors from around the globe and is becoming a popular site for training centers thanks to the area’s huge selection of accommodation.

With many nationalities and languages spoken in the area, the Côte d'Azur is an ideal setting for call centers. Every type of business has the potential to flourish here in both urban and rural settings.

The main assets retained by international CEOs:

• Expertise on a worldwide level in the main innovative sectors: IT and biotechnology
• Opportunities for technology partnership and cross-fertilization projects
• Highly qualified and multicultural Human Resources
• Europe’s leading Science and Technology Park: Sophia-Antipolis
• A large scope of financial and fiscal incentives dedicated to company setting-up and innovation
• New corporate real-estate programs available at highly competitive prices
• An incomparable lifestyle - a source of motivation for company personnel

Short Takes

During its first round of fundraising in 2004, Sophia Antipolis-based software publisher SEEMAGE, has raised € 2,5 million with TechFund Capital Europe, in association with 123Venture, Sophia Euro Lab and Primaveris. Two years-old this month, the company develops real time 3D software products and industrial equipment... California micro-electronics company AMCC (Applied Micro Circuits Corporation), has chosen the Côte d'Azur as the primary place to grow its French subsidiary. It is number one worldwide for the market of transmitter-receivers and high-speed optoelectronic switches... Yachting Vill@ge, a new multimedia software developer, arrived in Sophia Antipolis in 2004. Founded in January 2004, the company develops multimedia applications for mobile Internet technologies, focused on tourism and yachting... Eureka Soft and Voxpilot completed the merger announced in May 2004, forming a new company to be traded under the brand name Voxpilot And Voxpilot opened sales offices in Sophia Antipolis to cover Southern Europe respectively... The official inauguration of INRA's new 9,200 square-meter complex in Sophia Antipolis was held on Thursday, May 27. The Sophia Antipolis center is one of 21 regional centers across France comprising the "Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique" (INRA) and the institute's largest building project to date. Research activities here focus on the health of plants and their relationship with the environment. Scientific projects study three major themes: plant-micro-organism interactions, responses of organisms to environmental stresses, and environmentally respectful methods of cultivation and integrated production. It now houses 225 permanent agents including approximately 100 researchers. Large enough to accommodate teams from INRA, UNSA, CNRS and INSERM, the building provides the ideal atmosphere for creative cross-fertilization... In July 2004, the Japanese group Sharp, a world leader in consumer electronics and third in the Japanese mobile telephone market, joined the Eurécom Institute industrial consortium in Sophia Antipolis. After Hitachi in 1997, Sharp has been the second major Japanese electronics company to install a researcher at Eurécom in Côte d’Azur... Early in 2004, Alcatel Space announced a €6 million project to install a new acoustic chamber at its facility in Cannes-La Bocca. In response to the increasing size of telecom satellites, Alcatel Space decided to build the new facility to enhance its competitive edge and control production cycles. With 8,700 square meters of connected clean space, Alcatel Space's Cannes facility is unique in Europe in its ability to maintain the "cleanliness chain" from the start of satellite production until delivery at the launch site... In February 2004, Temex relocated its company headquarters from Sèvres to Sophia Antipolis. Temex designs and manufactures a broad range of standard and custom RF and Microwave products with various level of integration. The Sophia location is focusing on Temex filtering activities, in production as well as R&D... Visteon Software Technologies SAS, in Sophia Antipolis, was created in 2004 by Visteon Corporation – a global leader in automotive systems, modules and components. The new company blends this expertise to develop a wide range of on-board and off-board vehicle navigation systems... In January 2004, Stepmind secured investments of venture capital totaling €20 million - one of the largest fundraising efforts ever achieved in France. Founded in July 2000, Stepmind is a fabless microelectronics company specializing in high-speed wireless communications technologies... In October 2004, Axendo inaugurated a new agency in Vence for the South of France. The Bologne-based company, official partner with both SAO and Cartesis, brings its expertise in IAS/IFRS, consolidation and reporting tools and information systems to the Côte d'Azur... Nurtured in Eurécom since September 2003 and the PACA-East Incubator since October 2003, Indigen Solutions now introduces I.CMS (WebEditor Pro, WebPublisher and WebPublisher Avanced) to the public... IBM opened in 2004 at its site in La Gaude, a European test center specifically focused on RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), a technology expected to replace bar codes by 2009. La Gaude is IBM's third RFID test facility worldwide, after the U.S. and Japan...Oracle EMEA and the Data Base Forum (MBDS) Casa Nova created an "Academic European Excellent Center" on wireless information services. The existing Casa Nova "academic showroom" in the World Trade Center in Sophia Antipolis was transformed into a "professional showroom," to visitors and seminars on wireless information systems... Allyans, located in the International Center of Advanced Communication in Sophia Antipolis became Cisco's fourth training center in France, and the first such center outside the Paris region with the status of "Sponsored Organization"... In celebration of its 150th anniversary in 2004, family-owned fragrance company Payan Bertrand, announced the opening of a second production facility in Sainte-Margerite in Grasse. The company is investing €300,000 in new equipment for the facility, dedicated exclusively to perfume blends...Honeywell, which located its state-of-the-art European Data Center in Sophia Antipolis in 1997, is continuing to transfer the activities of national data centers in various European countries to its facility in the science park. In 2003, its sophisticated Sophia site has become the European centre of this US-based multinational company for a variety of key telecommunications, Internet and data base functions... In 2003, Par’fex, a manufacturer of fragrance components , announced the building of a new production facility and offices in Grasse totalling 2,700 m². The 2 million euro investment follows a 46,000 euro investment in 2002 in a robot which handles 40% of the 350 tons of compositions produced by the company... In 2003, Spaceyes has become a separate entity from the company GEOimage which has been based in Sophia Antipolis since 1989. It handles the editing of the GEOimage Mapping Workshop, a tool for the processing of Earth observation images, and provides a full range of software-associated services including training and maintenance. Spaceyes also proposes customized software development and integration, and the implementation of a software suite dedicated to “New Generation 3D”... In 2002, Havas/Amercian Express located its Pan European Travel Center of American Express to become the first electronic reservation center in Europe for corporate travel.