October 14, 2005

Budapest-based subsidiary of the German IT provider faces bright future

Lufthansa Systems Hungária is celebrating its tenth anniversary. When this Budapest-based branch of the Lufthansa Systems group was founded in 1995, it was the global IT provider’s first subsidiary. Today, Lufthansa Systems Hungária employs over 200 people and is an important site for the development of IT solutions for the aviation industry in particular.

“Our Hungarian subsidiary is facing a bright future,” said Wolfgang F. W. Gohde, CEO of Lufthansa Systems, expressing his congratulations. “We are going to expand our Budapest site into a development and competence center which will specialize in IT developments for the airline industry.” The ultimate goal is to transfer full responsibility for entire IT applications to Lufthansa Systems Hungária. 100 new jobs will be created in the course of this expansion.

In 1995, there were three main reasons for Lufthansa Systems to found its first subsidiary in Hungary: the outstanding state of education and the German/English skills of the IT developers there, the importance of Hungary as a gateway to countries in Eastern Europe, and the positive forecasts for the economic growth of the Budapest region.

In the initial phase of the company’s foundation, its 60 core employees were familiarized with all segments of the parent company. The Budapest-based project team was then increasingly integrated into complex IT applications. Lufthansa Systems Hungária thus quickly established itself as an important development and production site in the global corporate group. The company specializes in services for the aviation industry. The IT engineers in Budapest have made important contributions to the software for Lufthansa’s check-in processes and to the distribution, management and passenger systems of other airlines.

Lufthansa Systems Hungária also developed and manufactured a tool for introducing new services and accelerating the transmission of messages for the Hungarian mobile services provider Pannon. Other developments from Lufthansa Systems Hungária relate to the provision of large amounts of data - such as Lufthansa’s worldwide flight schedule or extensive company telephone directories - on PDAs and Pocket PCs.

Note to the editor:
Lufthansa Systems is one of the leading IT service providers for the airline and aviation industries worldwide. As a systems integrator, the wholly owned subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group covers the entire range of IT services, including consulting, development, implementation and operation. Lufthansa Systems provides its IT infrastructure and operations services to a variety of industries. Headquartered in Kelsterbach near Frankfurt/Main, Germany, the company has several branches in Germany and 17 other countries and employs around 4,500 people worldwide. In business year 2004, Lufthansa Systems recorded sales of EUR 628 million.