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Thursday, March 17, 2005
India study tour shows that Cebu can be globally competitive in IT
Cebu can be globally competitive in information technology (IT). But the Philippines as a whole will have to unify the various IT groups and improve the quality of its IT graduates.
This was the observation made by Francis Monera, senior vice president of Ayala Land Inc. and chief operating officer of Asia-town IT Park, after returning yesterday from a 10-day benchmarking study tour to India and Singapore.
“The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), an umbrella organization of IT software firms in India, is attributed with helping—in a mighty big way—in catapulting the country to its current leadership position in IT by providing unmatched support to the Indian IT industry,” said Monera, also chairman of the Cebu Business Month 2005.
“On the other hand, India’s IIITs—schools specializing in IT—continue to produce graduates from the country’s huge population that serve as the industry’s raw materials,” he added.
Monera and Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology (Cedf-it) executive director Bonifacio Belen led a 10-man team from the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) and the Cedf-it on a benchmarking study tour and marketing road show, visiting the leading IT cities of Bangalore, Hyderabad and Singapore.
The team had five representatives from industry and five from the academe.
The trip sought to compare the directions and programs that Cedf-it has been pursuing in the past three years with the initiatives undertaken by Bangalore and Hyderabad that have helped make India the premier global hub for both IT and IT-enabled services.
The trip was also used to promote the international Conference and Exhibition in Business and ICT 2005 (Cebu ICT 2005).
Meeting with the leaders from industry, government and academe enabled the team to establish alliances with key organizations so that similar missions can be organized to participate in the Cebu ICT 2005.
Cedf-it’s Belen expressed admiration for the achievements of the Indian IT industry in the past decade, but said the trip made the team realize that “there is absolutely nothing that we Filipinos cannot replicate, if not altogether do much better in.”
“In fact, we felt that most of our interventions in Cedf-it had been validated and a few could be better enhanced,” he said.
The combined Cedf-it and CCCI team visited 19 organizations in Bangalore and Hyderabad, including key academic institutions, such as the well-known Indian School of Business, the Indian Institute of Information
Technology–Bangalore, the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT); major government agencies including the Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education, the State Technology Parks of India, and the AP Invest of the Government of Andhra Pradesh; and big industry players from Dell, Micro-soft, Infosys, iFlex, Wipro, vMoksha Technologies, CrimsonLogic and GE.
Speaker
In Hyderabad, the team met with Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), whom they invited to be the keynote speaker at the Cebu ICT 2005 in June.
Karnik immediately expressed his desire to accept the invitation to elaborate on the experience of India in building a knowledge-based economy.
The Cebu ICT 2005 aims to be a catalyst in initiating partnerships among the participating nations, starting with India and Singapore, in information and communications technology (ICT).
Belen and Monera, with the support of the CCCI, the Philippine Embassy in India and the Indian Embassy in Manila, hope to put together a special mission from India and Singapore for the Cebu ICT 2005 to explore collaboration, especially in the area of IT human resource development.
In Singapore, the team gave a presentation to the Singapore Infocom Technology Federation.
The team also met with the representatives from the Nanyang Polytechnic, the Nanyang University, the National University of Singapore, and the NUS– Institute of System Science to explore possible collaboration with Cedf-it.
The team found that there are up to 7,000 Filipino IT service providers or developers working in Singapore.
(March 17, 2005 issue)
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