Manoo will complete his term today. As he prepared to step down, he took time to reflect on the rapid changes made during the last three years and shed light on where the industry is heading.

During the past three years, what changes have you seen in the country's software industry?

There have been many developments. First of all, Sipa was established as the government organisation to promote the country's software industry with the goal to place Thailand on the world software map by 2010. During the past three years, the software industry has had the highest growth in its 40-year history, with 24 per cent growth annually. It now represents 0.59 per cent of the country's gross domestic product, worth around Bt40 billion. We aim to raise it to 1 per cent of GDP as a minimum by 2010, or around Bt160 billion, of which Bt120 billion will be derived from domestic sources and another Bt40 billion from exports.

The year before Sipa was established in 2003, the software industry was valued at about Bt28.7 billion. Last year it was valued at about Bt41.4 billion and this year it's expected to reach Bt69.7 billion.

What has the agency done to encourage the software industry through the past three years?

 We have focused on strengthening the software industry by developing many key aspects, including training people, creating jobs and developing markets through more than 30 main programmes across four focused areas - enterprise software, animation and multimedia, mobile applications and embedded-system software.

We established the software industry's road map from 2004 to 2010, divided into three phases. Now we are completing many stages within the first phase. We've pushed the development of quality software with cost efficiency and solved weaknesses in the software industry, especially the lack of qualified people.

We have also worked on achieving global-standard certified software engineers, both for .NET and Java, hoping to have 10,000 to 15,000 staff by 2010. We launched a support programme for software companies to apply CMMi as well as pushed ISO VSE, a standard for very small software companies, as a part of ISO. We initiated programmes to encourage software houses to learn the new Software Oriented Architecture (SOA) technology.

So far we have 80 companies at world-class software standard and we've developed 500 SOA-based software engineers and Web-service experts.

With all the software-development projects that you have done, can you rate the accomplishments of Sipa during your term?

At this point I'm satisfied. Even though many things we've done are not yet effective, we think if we follow the roadmap we will achieve the goal. For three years we put almost Bt800 million into building infrastructure for software development, including qualified people, setting software standards, building awareness in Thai society on legal software, and pushing the country towards becoming an animation and multimedia hub along with digital content cities.

In what ways do you think the software industry should be developed in the future?

I think if we follow the road map and maintain the growth of the software industry at 20 per cent annually, we will achieve our goal and reach Bt160 billion. From now, everyone with an interest in the software industry should collaborate more and continually improve their skills.

They should always learn new technologies, come out with more SOA/Web service-based applications under the concept of "software as a service", and enlarge these to the entire industry.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation