TECHNOLOGY : Entrepreneurship Blossoms, Software Industry Grows in County’s Landscape

This is my last technology column--I’ve taken a job covering the chip business in Silicon Valley.

I’ve had an interesting tour of duty in Silicon Beach or whatever nickname high-tech entrepreneurs are using these days for Orange County.

Over the past four years, I’ve seen the county’s high-tech landscape undergo a radical change. When I started working here, the newsmakers were computer systems and components manufacturers like AST Research Inc., Advanced Logic Research Inc. and Western Digital Corp. They helped the county broaden its image beyond that of a center for the defense industry.

Then the software companies began to grow, creating jobs to replace those lost as the big hardware concerns began manufacturing their goods overseas or outside California. The software industry’s rise passed largely unnoticed, though, partly because Orange County wasn’t lucky enough to be the home to giants like Microsoft or Novell. (In an ironic twist, the county’s biggest software firm, Platinum Software Corp., faltered earlier this year when its top executives resigned because of an accounting scandal. The company’s product: accounting software.)

Irvine Spectrum has blossomed into a high-tech mecca, thanks to support from UC Irvine, venture capitalists, network groups like the American Electronics Assn.’s Software Forum, patent attorneys and sunny weather. Engineers who work in the industrial park--at Toshiba America and Western Digital--have lots of company these days at smaller companies nearby.

Still, high technology accounts for only one Orange County job in 20 today, and the fact that its economy is diversified may protect the county from ups and downs such as those that the San Jose area experienced as the fortunes of the computer chip industry fluctuated. So say the county’s boosters.

Entrepreneurs continue to prosper. Tom Yuen, a co-founder of AST, is hoping that lightning will strike twice--that the five small computer-related companies he has started will become international contenders.

High-tech fraud has prospered, too, perpetrated by information superhighwaymen.