Financial Times

Offshore opportunities for the IT industry were given a bigger impetus at the recent Software Industry Forum which was organised by the Software Exporters’ Association.

Along with the mission to achieve $1 billion in software exports by 2012, speakers at the forum also emphasised that the industry should be more concerned about global opportunities.

Tony Weerasinghe, CEO of Millennium Information Technologies said that there are global opportunities in the fields such as finance, telecommunication, transport, trading and manufacturing. “In the present business environment everything is driven by IT, it is not just a back up for the businesses,” he added. He said the software industry faces many challenges in achieving these goals. “We lack our own identity in the global context; most people are not aware of our capabilities,” Weerasinghe said.

Lack of capital, size of the organisations, lack of skilled labour and tremendous risk in the current situation of the country are also some of the key challenges.

“Picking up the suitable niche markets, better planning in business, partnering and effective use of the marketing budgets will help us to overcome these challenges,” he said.

Jayantha De Silva, Chairman, Software Exporters’ Association, said that the industry needs to focus on developing human resource skill. “More market sensitive education and training initiatives need to come up within the industry,” he said.

He said that countries such as India hold a higher position in the software industry in Asia since they have skilled labour in IT.

“It reduces the high cost of labour which is one of the main reasons that a country like us should concentrate on offshore business,” he added. (LA)