Fortune magazine released its Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies list this week — and two homegrown Waterloo Region success stories have made the top 20. Research In Motion has the #1 spot, and Open Text is #15. In fact, four of the 21 international (read: non-US-based) companies on the fastest-growing list are from Canada – the others are Enbridge in Calgary, and Potash Corp. in Saskatoon.

No surprise to those of us who live and work in Canada’s fastest-growing tech cluster to see RIM and Open Text on the list, but nice when the rest of the world notices the good things going on here. Tech, it seems, is the industry to be in these days. According to Fortune: “The technology world’s top performers are defying the downturn and dominating our list of fastest growers.” Of RIM’s growth trajectory, Fortune says the BlackBerry maker is winning big with consumers, with the Curve now the top-selling smartphone in the US. And Open Text has 46,000 customers using its solution to track documents for compliance needs.

So is it any wonder Waterloo Region tech companies are hiring like mad? With growth like this, demand for talent continues to be strong. A quick look at waterlootechjobs.com shows some of the current need for talent. There are more than 2,000 openings in the Waterloo Region technology sector, despite the downturn.

So hats off to RIM and Open Text — a big part of why Waterloo Region tech is on a roll.