(VEN) – In recent years, the cooperation between Vietnam and Japan in the field of information technology (IT) has made great progress. Vietnam is the top choice of Japanese IT businesses according to attendees at a recent Vietnam – Japan IT Cooperation Seminar.
Offshore trend of Japanese companies
Experts agreed that there is a growing trend to outsource IT operations (Offshore) in Japan, i.e. ordering software development abroad, especially for large IT companies.
According to Japan Institute for Overseas Investment (JOI), Japan’s offshore market tends to expand and Japanese companies wish to transfer investment to market having more advantages in terms of human sources such as Vietnam and Myanmar. In particular, Vietnam is a very attractive market because it is in the top 10 countries in world that export the most software products and Vietnamese IT enterprises are increasingly popular with Japanese enterprises. According to a survey at more than 1,100 Japanese IT companies in offshore operations by the Japan Information Industry Association (JISA), approximately 31.5 percent of Japanese IT companies choose Vietnam, 20.6 percent choose India, and 16.7 percent choose China.
According to Deputy Chairman of Vietnam Software and IT Services Association (VINASA) Pham Tan Cong, the Japanese software market is currently worth more than US$130 billion on annual basis, ranking the world’s second largest. The offshore trend has increased almost five folds since 2009 and offered good opportunities for Vietnamese IT industry. In a decade of hardship in market penetration, Vietnamese IT companies have so far confirmed their foothold in the Japanese market. For example, FPT Software Company, one of Vietnamese largest software exporters, has considered Japan the biggest revenue contributor, and is one of the most important markets in its global development strategy. Over the past three years from 2010 to 2012, the company’s annual revenue growth rate from the Japanese market averaged at 27.5 percent.
According to RikkeiSoft IT Director Bui Quang Huy, the company’s revenue from the Japanese market is growing at 100 percent rate on annual basis.
Other Vietnamese IT companies such as Vinicorp, TinhVan Outsourcing, and Luvina have built reputation and brand with Japanese partners and continued to receive orders from the Japanese side.
“Offshore IT market development is a potential for Vietnamese IT enterprises, considering advantages of price, high-level human resources and tax incentives. To date, Vietnam has attracted nearly 80 Japanese IT companies to come investing, accounting for 19.2 percent of Japan’s overseas software application development. It is expected by the end of 2013, there will be 20 Japanese IT companies registering to invest in Vietnam,” Pham Tan Cong said.
Strengthened high quality IT training
| According to JISA Vice President Junko Kawauchi, IT human resources are always a key factor in bilateral IT cooperation. To promote this cooperation, it is necessary to address several important issues such as project management capacity, Vietnamese engineer’s levels of Japanese and the Japanese engineer’s levels of English. |
According to IT experts, the offshore market is a potential market for Vietnamese enterprises; however, language barriers are obstacles in the process of business development. Therefore, Vietnamese IT enterprises should focus more on Japanese.
Oartech Chairman Michio Hayashi said “In Vietnam, IT engineers know much about English but very little about Japanese. We have spent three years searching for Japanese-speaking IT engineers in Vietnam but have not acquired enough.”
Many domestic IT companies have selected IT engineers for retraining, especially in foreign languages. For example, some Vietnamese IT companies have established training centers of their own such as FPT Software, TMA Solutions, and Harvey Nash.
Generally, Japanese is the most important key to take opportunities for collaboration with Japanese companies, along with competent human resources. These require Vietnamese IT businesses to have appropriate development solutions to take advantage of the global IT outsourcing trend./.
By Lan Anh
Đăng ký: VietNam News