Software sector to receive financial support of $3.1 million

The government has just approved to grant financial support worth VND60 billion ($3.1 million) to software enterprises to enhance their competitiveness in the international arena.

Under the Prime Minister’s decision, the Ministry of Information & Communications (MIC) started implementing the project of “Supporting software enterprises to build up and apply Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) based manufacturing processes”.

The project will be carried over the next 3 years (from 2010 to 2012) with an aim of training leaders and managers from enterprises on CMMI based software producing processes and digital content, consulting and assisting enterprises to develop in-line with standards and financing them to achieve CMMI certificates.

After completing the training courses, each enterprise will be funded with $25,000 for consulting and process application as well as another $10,000 for assessment and certificate issuance.

According to the MIC, international agencies will take part in training and consulting local enterprises.

During past years, the software industry has had a growth rate of 35-40% and $900 million in revenue per year. Meanwhile, the digital content industry has had a growth rate of 50-60% and $700 million in revenue per year. However, the achievement still does not match with its potential because many enterprises of software and digital content have limited scales and unprofessional manufacturing processes that lead to low competitiveness.

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a process improvement approach that helps organizations improve their performance. CMMI was developed by a group of experts from industry, government, and the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. CMMI models provide guidance for developing or improving processes that meet the business goals of an organization. A CMMI model may also be used as the framework for appraising the process maturity of the organization.