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Thursday, June 02, 2005
Toral: Cost effectiveness of local software
By Janette Toral
Digital Filipino
Last Sunday, an article was published in a national newspaper where a multinational software company executive said locally made software will be more expensive to support in the long run through upgrades and all.
It was quite a sweeping statement, so I talked to friends in the industry and asked for their insights.
Mike Jurado, president of Primary Software and head of Cebu’s software development organization, CebuSoft, is one of the pioneers in developing local applications.
He said: “For Third World-country small and medium enterprises, local
software is practical, sensible and affordable. The essence of software is quality in the lines of code used. The Filipino’s intellectual capacities are not lacking. We can write good lines of code. We just need to increase our quantity and sustain our quality.
“Changes and growth in the market environment that require IT
application upgrades are debatable. Prolonged and maximized use of current IT resources is the priority. Companies need not change applications, hardware, operating systems and network infrastructure when new products are introduced.
“Market changes have very little effect on an organization’s internal processes. The exception would be the increase and decrease in sales-related activities and people.
“Our DOS-based applications for Windows 98 environments are still used by approximately one-third of our client base... Local quality product and service improvements will address local software long-term issues.”
Jupiter Systems and Philippine Software Industry Association president Fermin Taruc shared similar views.
“I believe that whether you purchase from a local vendor or a foreign vendor, it is more important to make sure that you enter into a partnership with the right software provider. Jupiter Systems has been in the business for 20 years.”
“ERIC, JSI’s homegrown ERP software covering financial, distribution, manufacturing and HR operations, has been installed in over 700 sites across Asia.”
“Over this period, we pride ourselves in having kept in step with our customers’ requirements and technological evolutions. We have, in fact, several customers who have been using ERIC since its early
DOS version until today, with ERIC’s most recent Web-based innovations.
“ERIC is among the select group of Filipino products that have gone global. Translated/localized versions of ERIC are now in use in several markets, including
China, Vietnam and Thailand.
For the Philippine market, while taking into account globally accepted “best practice” principles, ERIC’s standard features automatically accommodate unique Filipino business practices that have to be handled by foreign software products through costly customizations or work-arounds.
“The above factors contribute not only to a low total cost of ownership for ERIC but also an IT investment that pays off in the short and long terms. It is not unusual for some local companies which may have started their ERP implementation with one of the foreign products to either proceed to succeeding phases with a linkage to ERIC or even switch to ERIC entirely.”
PCS CONGRESS. The Philippine Computer Society (PCS) (http://www.pcs-it.org) will have its 10th IT Professionals’ Congress on June 14-16 at the Grand Ballroom of Hotel Intercontinental Manila, Makati City, dubbed “In High Gear Toward Global
Excellence.”
After 38 years, PCS continues to build the skills and capabilities of the Filipino ICT professional through its development programs. The organization is also known for its annual “CIO of the year” competition. The title is bestowed by fellow IT professionals on chief information officers who have demonstrated excellence in implementing and/or managing their organization’s enterprise-wide information technology systems and applications.
(janette@digitalfilipino.com)
(June 2, 2005 issue)
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