Bill Gates said Viet Nam has great information technology development potential, adding that his duty now is to think about what Microsoft could do to accelerate IT development...
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Outsourcing To An Emerging Market: Vietnam
Why Us?
We have been established for over a decade globally. Our architects are leaders in their fields. They remove the risks by adhering to their local Computer Society Institutes, be it the Australian or British Computer Societies,
We remove your risks. You talk to our team locally to define your business needs, our team will talk to the remote teams.
We have local software architects and business analysts who are based permanently in the your country. They know how business is done locally. They are your door way to the east.
Our local team will work with you on shore to prepare your detailed specification for development at reduced cost offshore.
We take the risk and issues out of offshoring by acting as the intermediaries
Why are Thailand, India, Australia, USA and the UK outsourcing to us?
We have been providing outsourcing for BPO for the last two years to India. We have provided outsourcing to Motorola in the US and to numerous Blue chips in the UK.
Outsourcing to Vietnam? It's a little known fact that leading industry lights such as IBM, Cisco, Sony, Nortel Networks and NTT have been successfully outsourcing to Vietnam for some time. IBM even went on the record in March saying it is in talks with the Vietnamese government about establishing its own development center. In addition, the US government has just signed its first deal to outsource software development to Vietnam.
Mizan Ab Rahman, general manager IBM Indochina, sums it up by saying: "Outsourcing to Vietnam is paying dividends for numerous multinational customers but new entrants should ensure they have access to reliable and independent information about Vietnam and the IT market."
Outsourcing to an emerging market gives a frank assessment of Vietnam's potential to meet the offshore needs of multinational companies and includes the views of major players including Ford, Nortel Networks, Tata Consultancy Services and Aptech.
Nortel Networks is an example of one corporation that picked up on Vietnam's potential back in the 1990s. At present, the world's largest telecoms equipment manufacturer is outsourcing the development of a Java client that controls a high speed IP switch.
Commenting on the company's experience in Vietnam, Hung Trung, director, Software Engineering, Nortel Networks - Shasta IP Services Division, says: "Vietnam is well positioned to compete alongside Romania, India and China for outsourcing work given our experience. We did not have any reservations about working with Vietnam-based developers since the country has a vast pool of intellectual resources that remains largely untapped."
Quality human resources are one of Vietnam's key selling points. The country's education system has an implicit bias towards mathematics and logic that creates a ready supply of raw talent for the IT industry. But turning raw talent into deployable resources remains a work in progress. The skills gap is gradually being closed by overseas trainers such as Aptech, NIIT and Oracle, all of which are training thousands of Vietnamese programmers in dedicated centers across Vietnam. And last year, Australia's Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) became the first 100% foreign owned university to open its doors in Vietnam.
However, the key driver behind IT in Vietnam right now is the government. This may surprise some Vietnam-watchers given the country's reputation for cumbersome bureaucracy and the obstructive mentality of some of its officials. But in recent years the Communist Party of Vietnam has singled out the promotion of the software industry as a key plank of national development.
Claude Spiese, director of business consulting at Andersen Vietnam, has been watching reforms unfold in Vietnam for five years and believes that times are changing. "Days of waiting for Vietnamese authorities to someday wake up and allow the situation to improve, have given way to an era of action and implementation", he says.
Vietnam is the fastest growing economy in South East Asia and has some of the most liberal foreign investment laws in the region. The country now offers investors a stable business environment following the implementation of key economic reforms of the last two years.
Charles Mok, president of the Hong Kong Information Technology Federation takes up the point: "China grabs all the IT headlines because of the lure of its huge internal market. But in many ways China is like a casino for Asia-wide IT investors because of the immense scale and uncertainty involved. If Vietnam can position itself as a safe business environment with skilled technical resources, then tech firms would do well to discover a new set of partners."
Cost is certainly one issue that will catch the eye of companies with offshore development supply chains. Research Vietnam carried out a charge out rate survey comparing Vietnam with India. On average costs came in at half those being charged by Indian software developers.
It's little known that Vietnam is home to a number of software companies with blue chip clients, modern management practices, skilled labor and prices that undercut virtually all other credible outsourcing centers.