Local support, expertise pay off for French developer

Good support from the government and the high quality of local software developers are the main reasons French entrepreneur Fabrice Alizon was attracted to Thailand to set up a software-outsourcing business here.

Alizon had been working in France for the world's fourth-largest auto-maker when he decided in 2007 to establish his own companies in Asia. He chose Thailand as the location for his software development centre and head office.

The company, Strategic Software Solutions (S-Cube), is located in the Software Park Building and specialises in offshore software-outsourcing services for customers in Europe.

Alizon said the Thai government paid a lot of attention to the software industry and had many attractive support programmes for foreign software businesses. For example, his company receives investment privileges, including eight years of exemption from taxes, from the Board of Investment. It also receives advice, promotional support and coordination and rental space from Software Park Thailand.

The company's core enterprises are business solutions and software development using two main technologies: Java and .Net platforms. Therefore, as well as government support, the availability of software developers who are skilled in Java and .Net technologies was another factor that attracted him to Thailand. Most importantly though, the cost of software engineers in Thailand is 30 per cent less than that in India.

"There are good numbers of quality software engineers in Thailand and importantly they are cheaper than in India. Currently, the company employs 10 software developers and all of them are Thais," Alizon said.

S-Cube's business solutions include business intelligence, web applications and services, and engineering and supply chain systems. Its software developments include platform and customised systems, ad-hoc applications and e-solutions.

The company provides complete transparency throughout its outsourcing services with five steps of software development, from understanding the key aspects of a customer's requirements through specific questioning, to pre-planning, development, testing and reporting.

"With our result-driven approach, customers can follow each phase of the development online. We also provide internal testing to ensure we achieve the required quality. Each step of development is discussed and validated with our customers," Alizon said.

Thailand's broadband Internet infrastructure is of sufficient quality to support S-Cube's offshore software-outsourcing activities. All software solutions developed by the company are sold in Europe, especially in France and England, to four main categories of customers, in the banking, insurance, financial and telecommunications industries.

The company is planning to expand its business to the United States in the future and is seeking customers - especially multinational companies - in Thailand.

Expanding its business markets brings the concern of finding more highly qualified software engineers. At present, Thailand has between 4,000 and 5,000 professional software programmers and it's hoped that the number will reach 10,000 within five years.

Alizon admitted that the availability of skillful software engineers in the Java and .Net technologies in Thailand was a concern, even though there were many of them. The challenge of an offshore-service business, he said, was to balance the number of good software engineers and the number of outsourcing jobs.

Thailand's universities produce many thousands of software engineering graduates. Moreover, many local software companies are now adopting the international CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) certification, and this is a vital factor in advancing not only the experience of local software engineers, but their familiarity with effective software-process improvement and development, he said.

"Thailand is a good destination for software businesses in terms of cost and the availability of skilled software engineers. There is no disappointment involved in setting up a business presence here to provide offshore software-outsourcing services to customers around the world," Alizon said.