South East England is made up of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and West Sussex, and it is the most populous English region outside the capital. Its position next to London has made it a prosperous economic hub, but the counties do not behave as one market. A logistics yard near Dover, a lab on an Oxfordshire science campus and a guest house on the Sussex coast each have their own rhythm, their own customers and their own paperwork.
Much of the region's trade moves through gateways. The Port of Dover describes itself as the UK's busiest international ferry port, the Port of Southampton handles deep sea containers, cruise passengers and vehicle exports, and Gatwick is the second busiest airport in the country. The firms that supply, ship through or serve those gateways live by schedules, bookings and documents that have to be right first time, which is where well-built software earns its keep.
Research is the other thread. Harwell, a science and innovation campus in Oxfordshire, hosts organisations working on energy, space, health and quantum computing, and the region's universities feed spin-outs and specialist suppliers across the Thames Valley and the south coast. Around all of this sit two national parks, the New Forest and the South Downs, whose villages and market towns depend on visitors, farming and small independent firms.