Published on January 13, 2006

The Software Industry Promotion Agency (Sipa) will continue to promote local software development in four areas: enterprise software, animation and multimedia, game and mobile applications and embedded-system software.

Sipa president Manoo Ordeedolchest said that this year, Sipa would continue to promote these four areas of development with a greater concentration on outcomes.

The agency has allocated Bt439 million to promote the local software industry this year through initiative funding for the four areas.

The first area is enterprise software. Sipa will encourage local software companies to achieve standardised certification, such as Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) or the Thai-version ISO standards from the Association of the Thai Software Industry (ATSI). It expects to encourage around 30 software companies to be awarded CMMI status this year.

“As the Thai ISO version conducted by ATSI is not yet complete, we cannot set target numbers for this standard. About a dozen countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and South Korea, have participated in the drafting and are committed to applying this standard,” said Manoo.

By 2010, it plans to have 150 software companies with CMMI status and 500 software companies with ISO certification. Manoo added that this would assist Thailand in becoming recognised as a software country on the world map.

The agency will also encourage the creation of more professionals, including ones who are Java- and .net-certified, increasing from 1,000 last year to 2,000 this year. It eventually expects to have 15,000 certified professionals by 2010.

Moreover, Sipa must encourage software companies to learn and apply new techniques for reducing software-development costs, such as Web service, software-oriented architecture (SOA) and model-driven development (MDD).

Second is animation and multimedia software. The agency continues to create pre-professional and professional animators, targeting 500 for this year. It will also provide facilities, courses and tools for easier software development at a reduced cost. It plans to establish another animation studio in Bangkok. “We’ll set up one more animation studio like we did successfully in Chiang Mai with the Northern Animation Studio. We’ve prepared Bt15 million to promote this area. Apart from supplying proving facilities, we’ll also create markets for these people through international road shows and business-matching programmes,” said Manoo.

For game and mobile application software, the agency plans to encourage the industry with electronics courses for training software developers.

Manoo said the agency had licensed Microsoft’s X-box for training courses, with the aim of training Thai programmers to become familiar with game development on the X-box platform, which is expected to emerge in the near future.

In the next five years, the number of X-box devices sold in Thailand is expected to exceed 8 million.

Last is embedded-system software. Manoo said Sipa would work with the Thailand Embedded System Association to train many more people in this area. Sipa itself will provide facility support and coordinate with foreign partners like Japan’s IPA to set up local training courses for embedded systems, in collaboration with the Thai and Japanese governments.

However, apart from promoting these four areas of software development, Manoo said the agency would continue its existing schemes, including ICT City, Open Source and initiative collaborations with the Board of Investment.

asina@nationgroup.com

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation

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