Dashing for a last train

Manoo Ordeedolchest

For Thailand's software industry, the last train to the world's markets is about to pull out of the station, and the new chairman of the board at Software Park Thailand, Manoo Ordeedolchest, fears that if Thail companies miss it, the industry may be erased forever from the world's software map.

Software outsourcing, Manoo says, may be its last chance, and the man with four decades' experience in the software business is preparing to give it his full energy.

Software Park Thailand is an organisation under the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), which oversees the development of the local software industry.

"Five years ago, we tried to build up Thailand as a software outsourcing base, but with unclear government policy, the country lost the opportunity," he says.

Its second attempt to climb on to the global bandwagon is not helped by the very small size of Thailand's software market. But Manoo believes if local companies can begin outsourcing, they will be able to expand and Thai software development may be recognised on the world stage.

Software outsourcing has flourished over the past five years, and India has built up its software outsourcing industry until it is now recognised as the world's leader, with about 500,000 dedicated software specialists. Yet Manoo remains optimistic that a chance remains for Thai software developers to claim some of the action.

At present, he says, software outsourcing is changing its model. Instead of relying on one country to perform an outsourcing job, big software companies are changing to a global delivery model in which many countries will take part. In this way, time-zone benefits will allow software development to run 24 hours a day, helping to reduce the risks of relying on just one outsourcing country.

"I see this as a big chance for Thai software developers to catch up. So once again we have to urgently build up an emerging software outsourcing business, otherwise we will miss the train again," Manoo says.

As chairman of the board, Manoo is trying to push the emergence of a software outsourcing business. He believes it should be established as Thailand's direction on software development and a key mission on which the local industry can move.

He finds optimism in another aspect of the changing world scene. Apart from the change in the outsourcing model, which he believes will allow new countries to participate, he says outsourcing work in India is moving to a higher level. Instead of program coding, big software companies are now outsourcing software development at in innovative level. This is encouraging the Indian industry to gear itself up for higher-level outsourcing, which also offers more money.

This, Manoo says, is another key factor offering opportunities for Thai software developers. "Once India moves itself to higher outsourcing jobs, the jobs like program coding and program testing will be distributed to other countries and this will be there for us to capture."

As well, the advent of new technology like software-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 is driving business enterprises to greater use of software outsourcing services for their application development, saving the cost of buying software applications from large enterprises or using in-house software development.

With these developments, Manoo believes there will be opportunities for the local software industry, but local developers have to be prepared to reach out their capabilities and demand international recognition.

He says there are two key needs if the local industry is to take advantage of the software outsourcing trend. Because collaboration is a major issue in performing outsourcing work, the country needs to train people in project management, while training local software developers in new technology skills.

Manoo plans to push for training courses to develop professional programmers to serve the software outsourcing market. The courses, a collaborative effort between Software Park Thailand and Bangkok's Sripatum University, will train technical programmers in project management skills to develop their ability to handle software outsourcing jobs.

"We hope the courses will help to build a foundation of human resources to move the country towards becoming one of the world's software outsourcing bases," he says.

At present, Thailand has 4,000 to 5,000 professional software programmers, and it's hoped that with the training courses, the number of professional programmers will reach 10,000 within five years.

However, before receiving outsourcing work from abroad, Manoo believes local programmers should first handle local outsourcing jobs. To achieve this, a plan has been hatched that will involve Software Park Thailand and two other organisations under the NSTDA umbrella: Government Information Technology Services (Gits) and the Office of Computer Clustering Promotion. The three will form the IT Services Cluster to develop the domestic software outsourcing market for the local software industry.

The three organisations will use their own channels to get software development projects from the government sector and distribute the work to local software companies, using an outsourcing model. As it is responsible for government-sector software development, Gits will act as a project manager and pass the development work on to qualified software companies.

"This will help local software companies to develop themselves and improve their skills so that they can take international outsourcing jobs," Manoo says.

About 10 local software companies have already shown an interest in joining the IT Services Cluster and the three organisations plan to launch one or two pilot projects within the next few months.

As Manoo's ultimate goal is to push local software for export, he also plans to begin collaborating with international software outsourcing companies by inviting them to invest in Thai outsourcing businesses.

"I believe that to create a shortcut for Thai software for export, we have to invite international companies to invest here to use our country and its resources as a base to do outsourcing jobs. This will create recognition of Thai software development on the world stage in a shorter time," he says.

So far, one Japanese software outsourcing company is interested in launching a joint venture with a Thai software company and the match-making process is under way.

For Manoo, his 40-year career in software development has not yet ended. A new chapter is just starting.

"What I'm doing now is betting on the future of the whole Thai software industry. I believe that software outsourcing is a trend, and that it creates an urgent mission for the Thai software industry to catch the last train. If we succeed, we will have the momentum to move forwards, but if we miss it again, we may disappear from the world's software map," he says.

Pongpen Sutharoj

The Nation