OREANDA-NEWS. March 15, 2012.  “Norway has the highest salaries in the world,” says ICD Industries CEO, Christian Testman. “And this is not sustainable.” And so Testman has brought ICD to Estonia.

ICD Industries is in the control software business, their control design platform software (CDP) providing frameworks for their clients to develop, test, simulate and operate advanced control applications – “control” being what happens between a switch on one end and a physical action on the other.

Rolls Royce is a client. ICD’s products enable the creation of software to guide dynamic positioning, an intermediary system between a satellite signal and the thrusters on seagoing vessels which keep an offshore supply vessel in place in deep water. Also, ICD’s motion compensated products serve to align a heeling ship’s helipad with helicopter struts, permitting a safe landing in tossing seas. Or 3D real-time graphics, which allow a ship owner to experiment with crane placement with the ease of drag and drop technologies – before spending the 200 million euros necessary to build the ship.

“We make the toolbox to build the control tool,” explains Testman. “We build software to help other companies build their software.” And given ICD’s Norwegian roots, many of those products are benefitting from what Testman terms “the exponential growth in oil and gas drilling in the maritime sector.”

With a modest budget of 20 million euros this year, ICD employs only 50 people in Norway, and Testman has identified Estonia as a place which can help ICD’s growth through the outsourcing of programming resources.