Software development eyed to fuel IT growth

With Cebu’s emerging information and communication technology industry, more growth areas in this multimillion dollar sector are being eyed to continue its growth momentum, one of which is software development.

Information technology, based on the presentation during the first Open Source Summit, pointed out that Cebu has an enormous growth opportunity in ICT which is expected to expand to $110 billion to $130 billion by 2010 globally.

According to the five-year industry forecast made by the Bureau of Investments and the Business Process Outsourcing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P), software development for export can generate $1,275 million from the country’s IT business mix. From this figure, 20% will be contributed by Cebu and this will translate into 255 million dollars potential revenue for the province.

And in terms of job generation, this segment in the sector can generate about 15,000 jobs from the total 75, 000 generated employment nationwide.

Other BPO operations include: customer care, back office operations, legal and medical transcription, animation, engineering design, digital design among others but it is software development operation that is now being eyed for further development especially that more and more IT practitioners both local and foreign are exploring opportunities in the area.

For one is Syrinx, Inc., a Cebu-based company headed by an American software developer Matthew J. Denman. Syrinx, Inc. has served the American market for a long while having developed a number of software products for some Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, American Express, FedEx Corporation and the US Department of Energy to name a few.

Confident with the city’s software development sector, Denman eyes positive prospects for their operation in Cebu especially with the quality of labor that we have here.

“There is a very good market here in Cebu, and I believe it could become bigger. There is no longer a need for IT practitioners based here to venture to Manila or leave the country because there are several opportunities available already,” said Denman.

He added that the coming in of big business process outsourcing firms proves out that Cebu indeed has big potential to become an IT hub.

He said that with the kind of manpower that Cebu has, we have the capacity to sustain the demands of the emerging IT industry. However he pointed out that more training are needed to be done to harness these skills for world-class standard.

But Denman also added that in terms of number, there is still a limited number of manpower available in town to sustain the needs of the industry because there are only a few programmers here in Cebu who knows about sophisticated and complex development tools because most of them are in Manila.

“Programmers have to realize that there are actually more job opportunities here and they have to be aware that there is actually development in Cebu’s technology market and that it has huge potential to become an IT hub,” Denman stressed.

In fact, organizers for the first Open Source Summit tag Cebu as an innovation island and an integral component of the Philippine Cyber services corridor and it was in fact considered as the top four city to be identified among the 50 emerging outsourcing cities in the world.