Beijing recently finalized a national strategy to expand its international IT outsourcing services over the next few years.

A joint communique posted by Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission on Jan 7 projected that revenue from the industry could average an annual growth rate of 40 percent over the five years from 2011 to 2015, and it is expected to generate more than 4.5 million jobs in 2015.

However, a limited number of cities will be in a position to benefit from the policy incentives available under the central government program.

Known for its army of Terracotta warriors, Xi’an is also home to an army of young professionals who make the city an ideal location for a boom in IT services.

The Xi’an Hi-Tech Zone claims to have the third-largest pool of young professionals among all Chinese cities, and its leadership has major plans for 2013.

The zone is a government-built investment area that primarily serves privately owned companies involved in research and related fields.

Nearly 90 percent of the 17,000 companies in the zone are private research firms.

“Small technology enterprises are at the core of our brand,” said Chen Hui, deputy director-general of its administrative committee.

The zone’s role has remained the same since it was established in the early 1990s, he said.

Right now, the zone is running short of office space, dormitories and small apartments for its young employees, said He Kai, deputy director of Xi’an Software Park Development Center, a main division of the zone.

The shortage of office space was made worse when many large companies moved application-level research operations into the zone. First came global corporations, such as GE and Emerson, and then domestic IT giants, like Huawei and ZTE.

Huawei’s headquarters is in the coastal city of Shenzhen, one of the nation’s first special economic zone, which was established in the 1980s. It intends to hire 10,000 research staff for its facility in Xi’an.

ZTE,another Shenzhen company, plans to build a sizeable complex not far from the future Samsung site, and it will be big enough to hold another 10,000, the zone’s officials said.

College graduates

Only cities that combine a large pool of young professionals with a good but less expensive living environment can truly benefit from the opportunities presented by IT outsourcing, labor experts say.

Of all the factors that have helped the high-tech zone grow, the first is education. Xi’an has the third largest number of universities in all Chinese cities, after only Beijing and Shanghai.

Xi’an is ranked first among all Chinese mainland cities in terms of the number of students enrolled in private colleges. These schools closely monitor job market trends and adjust curricula accordingly.

Attractiveness to talent

Xi’an is also a preferable place to work for high-level talent and skilled workers from central and western regions and even across the country thanks to its rich culture, good public infrastructure and easy lifestyle. It also features a mixture of cuisine reflecting China’s northern, southern, western and Muslim traditions.

Housing prices in Xi’an are relatively low, making the city especially attractive. One can still buy a new apartment for 7,000 yuan (around $1,000) per square meter in Xi’an, while in Beijing, an apartment could easily cost 30,000 yuan per square meter, and in Shanghai, the price could further double.

The turnover rate in Xi’an-based companies is lower than that in companies in Beijing and Shanghai by at least 10 percentage points, aid Chen, an official from the zone.

Transportation hub

Xi’an is one of China’s inland transportation and distribution hubs. Companies cannot afford to ignore the city when attempting to penetrate the country’s still largely untapped vast interior market.

A high-speed rail link with Beijing started operation on New Year’s Day 2013, further integrating the city’s business with the coastal areas.

Once the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, an ancient Eurasian trade route, Xi’an is also poised to benefit from the recent growth in rail transportation between China and Europe.

Policy incentives

Local leaders see potential in the central government’s drive to promote urbanization while narrowing the gap between industrialized cities on the coast and ones in underdeveloped regions, such as those in the interior and the western frontier.

Only the few cities in the region with enough human capital and industrial power will be able to take advantage of all the new policy incentives from Beijing. Xi’an and Lanzhou are perhaps the only two in northwestern China to have this distinction, Chen said.

Driven by its nearby investment zones, Xi’an recorded a GDP of 435 billion yuan ($70 billion) in 2012. In terms of growth, it ranked highest among China’s all main cities, expanding 12 percent from a year earlier versus the average national economic growth rate of less than 8 percent.

“The year 2013 will be a year of bigger growth,” Chen said.

Source:http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90778/8223993.html

“Japan is one of the biggest software markets for Viet Nam, with 35 per cent of its turnover coming from that country,” Nhan Dan (The People) newspaper quoted Chu Tien Dung, deputy chairman of the Viet Nam Software and IT Service Association (VNASA), as saying.

Viet Nam has to train human resources to meet Japanese demand, he said.

In 2011 the industry achieved revenues of US$20 billion, an increase of 17.6 per cent year-on-year, but software accounted for only $1.2 billion.

The industry has 1,500 companies and 80,000 programmers.

According to a survey last November conducted by Japan’s Information Technology Promotion Agency (IPA) of 1,100 Japanese IT companies who outsourced their work, 31.5 per cent of them preferred Viet Nam.

The figures were 20.6 per cent for India and 16.7 per cent for China. But only 23.3 per cent actually outsourced to Viet Nam compared to 78.1 per cent for China.

Annually Japanese firms spend $10 billion on outsourcing but Viet Nam only accounts for 4 per cent of that.

IPA representatives said 88.5 per cent of Japanese companies preferring Viet Nam do so because they need young human resources to replace their own ageing workforce and diversify sources.

Information technology accounts for 10 per cent of Japan’s GDP, and software alone for 4 per cent.

The IPA said the biggest challenge for Japanese companies in Viet Nam is the shortage of professional human resources and language barrier.

For instance, Nissan Techno Viet Nam, a company that designs software for car maker Nissan, has 2,000 programmers. The company spent three years to recruit and train them in English, Japanese, and even driving.
In the 15 industrial and processing zones in HCM City, only 10,000 out of 270,000 workers have university degrees, meaning it is difficult to achieve any value-addition.

Source:http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/science-it/70518/it-industry-slowed-by-lack-of-skills.html

As signs of spring began showing in the technopolis of Cluj-Napoca, a new initiative of the Cluj IT Cluster was born: Cluj IT Innovation Days–meant to strengthen the local IT community and develop business relations with international partners.

Imprezzio Global, a subsidiary of US-based Imprezzio Inc., is one of the main organizers of the event. Since 2008, Imprezzio’s European branch has specialized in enterprise cloud-based applications, software as a service, mobile applications, existing-system integration, contact and marketing management and embedded hardware solutions.
Cluj IT Innovation Days kicked off March 20 with speeches by US Embassy delegates and Romanian government representatives and a keynote address by Jean-Michel Corrieu, Director of IBM’s Business Solution Center in La Gaude, France.

During the “technology” portion of the event on March 21, Imprezzio Global’s Architect Nazmi Savga and Lead Developer Agota Radoi Riger gave a presentation entitled “Is NoSQL the Sequel to SQL?” Other experts included staff from Microsoft Romania, CISCO, IBM Romania and professors from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca and Babes-Bolyai University.

Why the City of Cluj?

Over the decades following World War II, the second-largest city in Romania has steadily built itself into “the Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe.” Cluj currently boasts 100,000 square meters of office space along with a network of 64,000 km of optical fiber to support the 1,000+ IT&C companies registered there.

Recently, Imprezzio Global helped found the Cluj IT Cluster, a group of businesses and public institutions with over 20 years’ worth of experience in providing IT outsourcing services and products to customers worldwide. The Cluster boasts combined revenues of approximately 100 million Euros and a total of 3,500+ skilled IT specialists and support staff. Its goals include: promoting the “Cluj IT” brand in Romania’s public sector and internationally developing Cluj Innovation City, a 300 million Euro Community Project, meant to create an innovation area that will attract over 20,000 IT specialists in the next 15 years investing in R&D providing entrepreneurial plan development for start-ups
creating diploma-program internships and improving the tech skills of high school and university graduates working with government entities to promote best practices in IT services making Cluj IT Innovation Days an annual event becoming one of the most trustworthy IT service provider groups in Eastern Europe Says Tudor Armand Ciuleanu, Imprezzio Global’s Managing Director, “We have invested a lot of time and effort in the Cluj IT Cluster. With the support of the US Embassy and the Romanian Ministry of Development, we hope to increase brand awareness in local and global markets and succeed in accomplishing multiple R&D projects.

“We are positive about the concept of the Cluj IT Cluster and as the Cluj IT Innovations Days event was a real success, so we are certain that in time we will achieve all of the cluster’s goals.”

Source:http://www.sfgate.com/business/prweb/article/Software-Company-Imprezzio-Global-Helps-Launch-IT-4390864.php