About iX

iX

iX – Magazin für professionelle Informationstechnik is Germany's leading IT-professional magazine, published monthly by Heise Medien in Hanover. Founded in 1988, it addresses the people who run the digital infrastructure: administrators, developers, IT managers, security officers and consultants. Its content — in-depth technology analyses, product tests for professional use, security research, programming and the strategic questions of enterprise IT — is written at the level its expert readership demands. The magazine's digital home is within the heise.de portal; the standalone address could not be verified at research time, so no website is listed here.

Overview

iX appears monthly and treats information technology as a profession. Each issue carries the topics that occupy IT departments: server and storage infrastructure, networks, virtualisation and cloud, DevOps and automation, databases, programming languages and frameworks, IT security, data protection and the management questions — sourcing, licensing, compliance, strategy — that surround the technology.

The magazine's defining characteristic is professional depth: iX writes for readers who implement, not just consume. Articles assume expertise and reward it — the configuration detail, the architecture analysis, the code example — and the product tests assess enterprise suitability rather than consumer appeal. For the German-speaking IT profession, iX is the monthly reference.

History

iX was founded in 1988 by the Heise publishing house of Hanover — launched as "iX Multiuser Multitasking Magazin" in the era of Unix workstations and minicomputers — as the professional counterpart to the computer-enthusiast c't. The timing captured the professionalisation of IT: computing was moving from the hobbyist's desk to the company's data centre, and the administrators and developers building that infrastructure needed their own journal.

Through the decades iX chronicled the enterprise IT revolutions: client-server, the internet's arrival in business, Linux's conquest of the server room, virtualisation, cloud computing, containers and Kubernetes, DevOps, and now AI in the enterprise. The magazine's longevity — approaching four decades — reflects the IT profession's enduring need for the deep, independent analysis that daily news cannot provide.

Published from Hanover within Heise Medien, iX grew alongside its sister titles into one of the pillars of Germany's leading technology publishing house, with the heise online portal, c't, Mac & i and the German Technology Review forming the group's technology division.

The magazine's founding name — "iX Multiuser Multitasking Magazin" — captured the 1988 state of professional computing: Unix workstations, multi-user systems and the minicomputers that ran the businesses of the era. The title quickly outgrew the name's literal scope as professional IT itself expanded, but the founding impulse remained: to serve the people who build and operate systems, in the depth their work requires. While c't addressed the technically enthusiastic individual, iX from the start addressed the professional role — the administrator responsible for uptime, the developer shipping production code, the manager accountable for the IT budget.

Content

Infrastructure is the core: servers, storage, networks, virtualisation platforms and cloud architectures analysed with the depth the professional needs — the benchmark, the architecture comparison, the total-cost assessment. Security coverage — vulnerability analyses, defensive architectures, incident response, cryptography and the regulatory landscape — draws on Heise's renowned security expertise.

Software development receives the practitioner's treatment: programming languages, frameworks, APIs, CI/CD pipelines, testing and the craft of code, written by and for developers. The operations topics — monitoring, automation, configuration management, backup and disaster recovery — address the administrator's daily reality, while the management articles tackle strategy, sourcing, licensing, compliance and the business-IT alignment.

Product tests assess enterprise suitability: the storage array, the hypervisor, the security appliance evaluated against professional criteria. The famous iX workshops and the in-depth special issues serve the reader implementing the technology, not merely reading about it. The special issues — each devoted to a single professional theme such as network security, storage architectures or container orchestration — function as reference works that stay on the administrator's shelf long after the news cycle has moved on. The magazine's career and further-training coverage acknowledges that the IT profession is a learning profession: certifications, the evolving skill demands of cloud and security roles, and the management path from administrator to architect to CIO.

Coverage & Audience

iX is sold throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland at newsstands and by subscription, appearing monthly. Its readership is the IT profession: administrators, developers, architects, security officers, IT managers and consultants — the people who build, run and secure the digital infrastructure of business and government.

The magazine's influence within that profession is substantial: its analyses inform purchasing and architecture decisions, its security research shapes defensive practice, and its job-market and career coverage serves the profession's development. For the German-speaking IT world, iX is the professional journal of record.

That record is inseparable from the heise ecosystem in which the magazine lives. The heise online news ticker supplies the daily information flow — the vulnerability disclosure, the vendor announcement, the regulatory change — while the heise forums host the peer discussion where administrators compare notes on the article's subject by afternoon. iX's monthly depth completes the circuit: the news tells the professional what happened, the forum tells them what colleagues think, and the magazine tells them what it means and what to do. Few professional journals anywhere enjoy so complete an information environment, and it is a large part of why iX has remained indispensable for approaching four decades.

Ownership

iX is published by Heise Medien GmbH & Co. KG, the Hanover-based media group founded around the c't computer magazine. Heise Medien is one of Germany's leading special-interest publishers, with heise online, c't, Mac & i, the German edition of MIT Technology Review, Telepolis and a portfolio of events including security conferences. The company remains family-owned, headquartered in Hanover.

The family ownership and the group's identity as a technology specialist underpin iX's editorial independence — the freedom to assess enterprise products without vendor favour, on which the professional readership's trust depends.

Digital Presence

The magazine's digital home is within heise.de, one of the most-visited German-language technology portals, where iX content — professional news, analyses, security research and the famous heise forums — appears alongside the group's wider technology journalism. The heise news ticker serves the IT professional's daily information needs; the monthly iX delivers the depth.

The e-paper editions bring the magazine to digital readers, and Heise's events — including the security conferences — extend the brand into the professional community's physical gatherings. For the IT professional, the combination of heise online's daily currency, the forums' peer expertise and iX's monthly depth forms the complete professional information environment.

The heise ecosystem gives iX its unique working environment: the news ticker's daily flow, the forums' peer discussion, the c't's enthusiast depth, the conferences' professional exchange — and the monthly magazine's considered analysis completing the circuit. The IT profession the magazine serves has been transformed since 1988: the Unix workstations of the founding era gave way to the PC servers, the data centres, the virtualisation wave, the cloud — and the administrator's role evolved from the machine-room keeper to the architect of distributed systems. iX documented each transformation with the professional's perspective: not the vendor's marketing, but the practitioner's assessment — the benchmark, the total cost, the operational reality. The security coverage, in particular, serves the profession's most critical responsibility: the defensive knowledge, the incident analyses, the hardening guides that the working administrator needs. The special issues function as the profession's reference shelf: the deep dives into the technologies that define the era, kept long after the news cycle has passed. For the German-speaking IT world, iX remains what it has been since the Multiuser Multitasking days: the professional's journal, written by practitioners for practitioners, in the depth the responsibility requires.