VietNamNet
Bridge – The government has requested
and called on state agencies to use Vietnamese goods and services for their
computerization projects, in an aim to help develop the domestic information
technology (IT). However, the request has been ignored.
Vietnamese still prefer foreign products
Most
state agencies and state owned enterprises have been prioritizing foreign
products when choosing solutions for their IT systems.
Dang
Manh Pho, Deputy Director of the IT Center under the Bank for Investment and
Development of Vietnam (BIDV), said the bank, like many other banks, has high
demand for IT products and solutions to upgrade its operation. However, BIDV
has to purchase foreign products, because it cannot find the domestic products
which can satisfy the bank’s requirements.
Pho
said that Vietnamese banks are undergoing the restructure process, where they
need core banking, enterprise resource management (ERP) and customer
relationship management (CRM) systems. However, domestic IT firms do not have
any products or solutions to sell.
In
2011, when BIDV was assigned by the State Bank to support the merger of the
three banks in the south, it had to brainstorm the solution to treat the IT
systems of the three banks. The banks had five core banking systems, including
three running and 2 half-finished, all were foreign products.
“The
small Vietnamese market has been dominated by the world’s big firms. It’s
because domestic enterprises cannot win the hearts of consumers in their home
market,” Pho commented.
In
fact, Vietnamese IT firms are capable enough to create high quality products.
FPT, for example, has created SmartBak, a core baking product with high quality
which has been sold to both domestic banks and foreign banks from Laos,
Cambodia and Thailand. However, FPT, which ran out of patience, and has given
up the work of developing the product. As a result, the companies which bought
SmartBank, have to shift to use other systems, because they lack the support
from the service provider.
The key
problem lies in the fact that most of Vietnamese enterprises are small scale,
which do not have the financial capability and human resource powerful enough
to implement big scale projects.
Also
according to Pho, even the enterprises considered the “big guys” in Vietnam,
like Viettel, FPT or CMC, still cannot satisfy the banking system’s demand for
IT app development. BIDV once contacted the firms to discuss about data center
service, but it has found that the capability was too small in comparison with
the demand.
“The
demand for services is very high, because banks cannot do everything
themselves. However, the services remain very poor,” Pho said.
State’s instructions ignored
The
government has applied a lot of legal documents with preferential policies
aiming to support the IT development in Vietnam. However, the policies still
have not helped.
The
problem is that many policies on offering preferences to IT firms have been
ignored.
The Ministry
of Information and Communication released the Circular No. 42 in 2009, showing
the policy on using domestically made IT products for the state-funded projects
or the projects with the state owned capital.
The
circular stipulates that if domestic products have the quality equal or higher
than foreign products of the same kinds, state-funded projects have to choose
domestic products.
IT
firms cherished the hope that with the new policy, they would be able to boost
sales and increase the turnover by 10 times. BKIS had every reason to believe
that its BKAV anti-virus, which has been recognized by international inspection
companies as having high quality, would be the choice of domestic enterprises
and agencies.
“However,
most of the state agencies make light of the legal document,” said Nguyen Tu
Quang, a senior executive of BKIS.
Buu
Dien
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