Part of the strength of Ottawa’s economy is the diversity of its industries.  Ottawa’s high tech sector continues to grow employing over 78,000 employees within 1841 companies. The software cluster is the largest sector with over 600 companies established in the community followed by technology services and telecommunications. However, the Telecommunications cluster employs the largest number of people followed by software, security and defence, and Wireless respectively. Nortel continues to be Ottawa’s largest employer outside of the public sector.