“Scottish firms that are not currently exporting need to be more ambitious. The real risk is simply relying on the home market. Selling internationally offers a huge business opportunity and these companies need to grab it with both hands,” says CEO ScotlandIS, Polly Purvis.

In fairness, Scottish technology companies are waking up to the fact that the route to greater commercial success lies in exporting overseas, and according to the annual survey commissioned by ScotlandIS and technology specialist 9-20recruitment, rely less on home markets for customers.

Some 80% of respondents now conduct business in the rest of the UK, the first “export” market for many.

Europe is becoming an increasingly important market with over 40% of respondents selling there and 30% selling to the US. There is a strong correlation between these figures, with 70% of companies reporting European sales also selling to the US. Alas 40% of companies have no plans to export their products or services.

For new exporters, the US is the most popular export market (43%), followed by Europe (25%) and Australia (16%). Sadly only 2% of respondents look to explore the vast Asian markets. In contrast, Asia emerges as the second top potential new market for current exporters (22%), indicating that experienced exporters are less concerned about the issues of selling to Asia.

Digital technologies currently employ one in 20 of Scotland’s workforce (over 100,000) and the sector contribution to productivity growth is fifth highest in the UK, adding £3.4bn to the Scottish economy annually.

Permanent employees rather than contractors are the preferred option for the majority of respondents, in particular for sales and marketing, infrastructure and support functions. Encouragingly, graduate roles are the second highest level of jobs (28%) in demand in the ICT sector .

Gordon Brown, director of 9-20 recruitment said: "This year, we are seeing organisations within the technology sector create lots of new revenue streams through productisation and new technology spin offs. 

"Fresh investment, far less evident in previous years, is making a come back and giving SME's and start ups the chance to compete with larger companies.  This investment will allow Scotland to hold on to the most talented IT professionals on the market and help to secure the future of this sector."

From the technology companies surveyed, 54% reported a rise in turnover during 2010. The vast majority (79%) expect sales to rise even further this year with only 11% expecting sales to decline.

Scotland technology overview
'Top 5’ digital technology sectors are software solutions & services (27%) web development & e-commerce (12%) IT  consultancy (8%) services to technology (12%) and application development (9%).

The ICT sector benefits from a high rate of start ups. Over 40% sample companies have been in business less than 10 years 13% formed in the last 5 years. Just under half of those formed before 1983 are now very large organisations.

The vast majority (88%) of this years respondents have their HQs in Scotland, 75% of the total sample located in the central belt, in line with the geographic distribution of wider industry.