More than VND2.3 trillion for IT development

As part of the efforts to precipitate Vietnam's IT development, the Prime Minister has assigned the Ministry of Information and Communications to prepare the National IT Development Program until 2020. The draft identifies six key pillars for the development of Vietnam's IT industry including improving the legal environment, developing human resources, consolidating IT companies, diversifying IT products and services, attracting investment in brand and market establishment, constructing IT parks and applying open source software. The state budget is to fund this program up to VND2.337 trillion.

Regarding IT policies, credit loans will be available for investment projects for software, digital content, hardware, electronics, and IT services. IT tax policy will be amended. The Government will soon have policy toward establishing IT development funds in Vietnam.

With reference to IT human resource development, IT companies will receive funding from the State for short-term training courses, international IT certification exams and apprentice's activities that their staffs participate.
Considering IT corporate development and consolidation, the Government will financially support local IT companies by covering the costs of brand construction and purchase as well as application of standards including ISO 27001, ISO 20000, and CMMi.

Vietnam Software Association (VINASA) General Secretary Pham Tan Cong said, "An IT project should not exceed 5 years in term as IT sector is continually developing. For example, we planned to earn US$12 billion from mobile phone export this year, but Samsung Vina Electronics Co. alone already earned nearly US$3 billion from mobile phone export in the first quarter. Samsung Vina's rapid development surprised local IT strategists and policy makers. Therefore, we should focus more on IT planning and concentrate our internal resources on national software and digital content development as we have great potential."

Ho Chi Minh City Computer Association Chairman Chu Tien Dung agreed that "The National IT Development Program until 2020 seems too long and should be trimmed up in the form of a framework program that need review every two or three years to see what we should or should not focus anymore. Besides, the partnerships between the Government and IT enterprise and associations should be clearly identified in carrying out mutual objectives, the State should act as a major customer ably to influence the domestic market in terms of IT product and service development, and only cover low profitable areas that are difficult to attract local IT companies.
 
How to survive the domestic market

At the seminar, experts agreed that to dominate the domestic market would be most important in the country's IT development. Although small, Vietnam's IT market was attractive to many internationally well-known companies. They came and intended to dominate the domestic market with their advanced technology and products while local companies were entangled with under-developed products and services. In addition, Vietnamese IT companies were focusing on the domestic market and paid little attention to foreign markets, which limited their international expansion and kept them far behind big companies in India and China.

Director of the Bank for Investment & Development of Vietnam's IT Center Dang Manh Pho said, "I don't think that Vietnamese IT companies are too weak to compete with foreign companies. There have been companies with competitive products on the market but they seem not to stick to their products. For example, FPT Software has marketed SmartBank, a high-quality core banking product, which is being used not only in domestic banks but also in foreign banks in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. But after a while, FPT Software stopped maintaining and developing this product, and as a matter of fact, its customers must switch to other products because there is no further support for that product."

In reality, Vietnamese IT companies are not asymptotic to the requirements of the market. Most small and medium-sized IT companies are finding it difficult to gather adequate financial and human resources for large projects. "There is great potential for IT applications in the domestic banking sector as they are in the restructuring process. For example, core banking systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and Customer relationship management (CRM) system. I think local IT companies should be aware of that," said Dang Manh Pho.

Chairman of MISA JSC's Board of Management Lu Thanh Long said, "Local IT companies should be improved in terms of production and trading capacity through support programs including ISO and CMMi development programs. In addition, it is necessary to have favorable policies for local IT business start-ups, product development, and business environment."

According to Director of Bach Khoa Internet Security Center Nguyen Tu Quang, for over a decade we have had a lot of IT development programs and projects, but we have not made progress because of lacking initiatives. For example, the Ministry of Information and Communications has promulgated a legal document that stipulates the domestically produced antivirus software with equal or better quality compared to foreign similar products shall be used if being purchased by the state budget. However, this stipulation has not been strictly followed.
 
"Our sales might be decupled and expanded to the global market if domestically consolidated. Therefore, we expect that the Ministry of Information and Communications will issue additional sanctions and management mechanism so as to ensure the implement of the stipulation," added Nguyen Tu Quang./.