International success

The prestigious GLOBAL Foreign Trade Award 2019 has gone to Wibu-Systems alongside the other winners Blanco Group and Wickert Maschinenbau. Every two years, the TechnologyRegion Karlsruhe and the foreign trade committee of the Karlsruhe Chamber of Commerce picks internationally successful companies from the region for the GLOBAL award. This year’s award, presented at a gala event on 16 October, draws attention to particularly effective international business models, with the award jury considering such factors as the candidates’ roots in the Karlsruhe region, structures, innovation and performance track record, intercultural affinity, and ability to adapt to the markets in other countries.

Wibu-Systems supplies its international markets with protection, licensing, and security solutions that empower software developers and intelligent device makers to secure their software and their invaluable know-how in the fight against theft, product piracy, reverse engineering, and illicit tampering. As a pioneer in a niche business, the international market has always been of immense importance for the company, which showcased its capabilities to the world already four years after its foundation at the Comdex exhibition in the United States. Since then, the protection specialist has created a network of distributors across many countries and established a local presence with subsidiaries in the United States, China, and Japan and sales offices in Europe. Direct exports account for approx. 55% of Wibu-Systems’ sales, although this share rises to almost 80% when sales through distributors and subsidiaries and the similarly strong exports of German clients are included.

Wibu-Systems’ CEO and founder Oliver Winzenried was proud to receive the award: “Accepting the GLOBAL 2019 on behalf of Wibu-Systems is a personal honor for me. Free trade benefits us all: It creates better and cheaper products, more choice, more jobs, more security, and greater peace through co-operation. We care about open international standards, as do our clients who integrate our solutions in the products they sell around the world. The sheer diversity of challenges and talents we encounter worldwide makes us more competitive, and diversifying our markets makes us less exposed to the vagaries of single markets.”

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Wibu-Systems, a privately held company founded by Oliver Winzenried and Marcellus Buchheit in 1989, is an innovative security technology leader in the global software licensing market. Wibu-Systems’ comprehensive and award-winning solutions offer unique and internationally patented processes for protection, licensing and security of digital assets and know-how to software publishers and intelligent device manufacturers who distribute their applications through PC-, PLC, embedded-, mobile- and cloud-based models.