VietNamNet Bridge – Nearly one million US dollars, or over VND20 billion, would be disbursed from the state budget in a program to help software firms obtain the CMMi (capability maturity model integration) and ISO27001 certificates, which are considered the effective marketing tools for businesses to improve their competitiveness.

State readies for disbursement

The Prime Minister approved the VND60 billion project on helping software firms build up and apply the production process in accordance with CMMi process in 2010-2014, showing the determination of Vietnam to become more competitive n the software market.

Reviewing the project implementation in 2010-2012, Dr. Nguyen Thanh Tuyen, Deputy Director of the IT project management board, said the 12 training courses on CMMi have been provided to 400 learners from 100 businesses, software and digital content organizations so far. 22 businesses have got the support to apply CMMi, of which one business has obtained CMMi level 5 and 14 obtained level 3.

A preliminary report of the IT Industry Department of the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) showed that 12 out of the 14 businesses obtaining CMMi have the turnover from software exports increasing continuously for three years 2009-2012. About 2/3 of the businesses said their prestige has been improved considerably after they got CMMi.

MIC plans to hold 18 other training courses on CMMi and software production skills by 2014, and 18 training courses on IS027001 to enterprises and institutions. It would also help another 11 businesses apply CMMi, 30 businesses apply ISO27001 and 40 enterprises obtain ISO27001 certificates.

It is estimated that the state budget would have to pay VND20 billion by 2014, or one million dollars to fulfill the set program.

Will software firms spend the state’s money?

Hoang Nam Tien, President of FPT Software, while saying that CMMi is a very useful certificate which shows the ability of software firms, has warned businesses that it would be a time and money consuming process to obtain and apply the certificates.

According to Tien, there are five levels of CMMi. It took FPT Software eight years to obtain CMMi level 5. Therefore, businesses should consider their real capability and scale to decide what they should do to obtain CMMi levels suitable to them.

Though the State has promised a big financial support worth tens of thousands of dollars, businesses still keep hesitant to spend the state’s money.

The problem is that the tens of thousands of dollars propped up by the State is considered a “tidbit which is not easy for businesses to swallow.” In order to be able to spend the sums of money, businesses themselves would also have to spend their own money as well.

Meanwhile, businesses don’t intend to spend much money at this moment just to obtain certificates. In the context of the economic recession, they would rather cut down expenses to optimize the profits than spend money.

This explains why to date only 10 businesses have obtained CMMi certificates so far--a modest number if noting that MIC hopes to see 90 businesses obtaining CMMi level 3 after three years of the project implementation. A lot of businesses said they don’t intend to obtain CMMi right now, while others have given up in half way.

Nguyen Trong Duong, Director of the IT Department under MIC, said MIC encourages businesses to obtain CMMi and apply ISO27001.

“We understand that businesses have to spend money on many other items, but they should be aware of the importance of the certificates when they join the world market,” Duong said.

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