To develop the software industry is considered as an important strategies and one of the major programme of Ho Chi Minh City as this industry is of great potential, which may help the city to promote its economic restructuring and prepare for a knowledge economy.
In fact, the industry’s development in recent years remained slow. Dr Le Truong Tung, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Information Technology Association, said that the city had around 372 software enterprises but only one of them, TMA Company, had over 500 programmers, four others had between 300 and 500 programmers and eight enterprises have between 100 and 300 programmers. The number of enterprises having less than 30 programmers is put at 321. Tran Lac Hong, general secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Information Technology Association, said that the analysis results showed that only 120 out of 200 registered enterprises manufactured software products. Of the figure, 50 enterprises, or 40 per cent, stopped their operation after a short time and only 70 enterprises, or 60 per cent, still survive. However, the concept of ‘survival’ is not enough for such potential industry as software.
Dr Nguyen Trong added that from the point of view of investors, the Vietnamese software industry had such advantages as low financial costs, significantly low infrastructure and other costs including cheap labour costs even though salary payment in Vietnam remains less competitive than India. However, he pointed to seven disadvantages, including a shortage of human resources, under-developed infrastructure facilities, intellectual property rights violation and piracy, poor international integration knowledge of Vietnamese, poor skills of local programmers, poor education standard and language skills and risky software business activities.
Therefore, Ho Chi Minh City asked the Department of Post and Telematics, the Ho Chi Minh City Information Technology Association to develop a ‘Development support programme for Ho Chi Minh City software enterprises in the 2006-2010 period’ to identify targets and objectives and measures to develop local software enterprises into a spearhead economic sector by 2010. The programme is targetting at least ten large software enterprises, which have more than 500 programmers, some enterprises with around 1,000 programmers, and at least 400 small-sized software enterprises. The local software industry is striving for a target of software sales of between US$400 million and 450 million.
To develop strong software enterprises, Dr Trong mentioned things three parties, including software enterprises, the State and associations, should do. The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Post and Telematics, for example, with its responsibility of a State management agency should develop and publicly announce plans and the results of information technology application in State agencies in the city. It should develop an information channel for local enterprises’ information technology applications. Software enterprises, in turn, should establish consultancy companies to help State agencies to apply information technology, providing training services in English and Japanese for programmers. The Ho Chi Minh City Information Technology Association should act as the focal point in establishing software bridges to introduce the Vietnamese software industry’s potential to the world, developing standards for local software enterprises with a focus on standards applied to small-sized enterprises and the training of chief information officers for enterprises.
At a seminar to gather the input and comments of enterprises to perfect the programme, some software enterprises said that there programmes should be put in place to discover talent and provide support for start-up software enterprises. Dr Nguyen Huu Le, chief of the consultancy council of the TMA Company, said that a specific identity should be developed for Vietnamese software outsourcing industry as it had great export potential. Without such an identity, for example China has become well-known for its hardware products, and Russia, for its complicated calculation systems, Vietnam would not be able to enter the international labour specialisation line.
The success of leading outsourcing companies in Ho Chi Minh City shows the importance of specialisation and skills of Vietnamese engineers in complicated hi-tech processes. This advantage should be developed. Addressing difficulties in human resources, apart from co-operation with universities and colleges, TMA and FPT are promoting the opening of their own universities to become more active in training programmers. This should be encouraged to increase competition and share the training burden with the education and training service. Furthermore, promotion activities should be boosted to help enterprises get access to foreign partners by building portals in English, Japanese and French. Also, international exhibitions on software outsourcing should be organised more regularly to attract attention from the international information technology community. More importantly, the local software industry should build and develop some trademarks to be equal to the international level and capable of representing the local software industry. After occupying a leading position in the Southeast Asian region, TMA is striving to become a giant in the world of telecommunication software with a target of employing 2,000 programmers in 2007. This is an example other enterprises should follow.
Hoang Le Minh, deputy director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Post and Telematics and member of a consultative group of the programme, said that the department would complete its report and submit the draft programme to the People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City in November or December, 2005 for approval. At the same time, the department will develop detailed plans for each item within the programme, putting them into the city’s information and communication technology programme for 2006, which will be submitted to the City People’s Committee in December, 2005. In the short term, the department will develop a plan to select and award outstanding solutions and products of the city in 2005. It will continue to implement other projects on providing market information, preferential policies, support for enterprises to meet the management standard, and training support for enterprises to help them develop their human resources.
Hai Nguyen
Vietnamese
