Vietnam outsourcing industry

Many of the world's largest brands in technology are heading to this Asian country to develop high-end game software and designs.

In 2002, when Microsoft 's video game department intended to "outsource" part of its overseas work, Vietnam was also a very fuzzy choice. But after the company made a field survey tour in India, China, Korea, Vietnam, a small company called Glass Egg Digital in Ho Chi Minh City suddenly emerged as a heavy contender. signed the most.

View at E-Town, the new high-tech center of Ho Chi Minh City.City named Uncle has just been voted BusinessWeek prestigious magazine as one of the 10 new destinations of world outsourcing.Source: BW

Microsoft decided to give Glass Egg a trial of a "pilot" project: designing 3-dimensional racing cars used in the Xbox's Forza Motorsport game. After successfully completing this "mock test", Glass Egg's relationship with the software giant became increasingly close.

Now, of the 330 different models of Forza Motorsports, Glass Egg Digital's products account for most. Lamborghini, Maseratis and Mercedes cars are not only designed in the form and "soul" exactly as they were when they were raw, but also after they crashed (because of racing), they looked pathetic as well convincing.

The next step, Microsoft is planning to give Glass Egg a much more complex and demanding task: Designing the race track and the cities that host the race. "Currently, we are working with Glass Egg on a large scale," said Nick Dimitrov, senior sales manager for Microsoft Game Studios. "They had very good quality products, and we couldn't be more happy."

"Hiring" for giants

Vietnam's IT platform is attracting world IT giants to "outsource" programming jobs thanks to a team of highly qualified programmers and cheap labor costs.Photo: Le Anh Dung .

Dimitrov was not the only one who praised Glass Egg. " They designed some great content for us ," said Brian Woodhouse, an official at Bizarre Creations, Liverpool.

According to Bizarre's outsource contract, Glass Egg has designed gas masks, telecom towers and monuments to appear inside Saga's very famous Club shooter.

Now Glass Egg's customer list includes Electronic Arts, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Codemaster and Atari, all of the world's gaming giants. Founded in 1995 by an overseas Vietnamese named Phil Tran, Digital Glass Egg is enjoying a half-time growth in sales over the past two years. Although it did not disclose the specific number, but according to BusinessWeek estimates, it must be approximately $ 5 million in 2006.

Glass Egg is not the only IT company in Vietnam that is doing well in software outsourcing. Alive Interactive (owner of Vietnamese-American like Glass Egg) is also excellent in the field of automotive design, while TMA Solutions software developer (founded by an overseas Vietnamese from Canada) is cooperated with Nortel, Comsys and Alcatel-Lucent.

Stamping your guests

Game programming is becoming "fashionable" by Vietnamese software companies specializing in outsource to foreign companies.Photo: Le Anh Dung .

Domestic IT enterprises themselves are also accelerating. The largest outsourcing company in Vietnam is FPT recently received $ 36.5 million investment from Texas Pacific and Intel Capital.

One more proof that the potential of Vietnam is the big names of the world IT village continually visit this country in recent times.

In March, President Craig Barrett came to Vietnam to announce a plan to build a $ 600 million chip testing and assembly plant. Last November, the chip giant "aggressively" raised the investment to $ 1 billion, despite the previous statement whether or not to invest depends on business results in the first few years. of the factory.

In April, Bill Gates was welcomed as a rock star at Hanoi University of Technology, where he presented his views on IT Vietnam.

Thorny

According to BW's assessment, Vietnam's Internet connection is still slow at "bad" level, and will hinder much of the fledgling outsource industry.Photo: Le Anh Du ng.

However, there are still many major obstacles in the path of making Vietnam a hot spot of outsourcing. Internet connection is "slow to bad" because there is no fiber optic broadband network. Glass Egg staff often stay up until midnight to upload and download files.

Another difficulty is the lack of fluent English-speaking workers, although customers say this issue is not too large because most communication is via e-mail. But in return, wages paid to workers in Vietnam are very cheap. A programmer earns only one-tenth of a colleague in the United States.

With software exports and IT products reaching only $ 70 million last year, Vietnam 's "little girl" is still far from catching up and making it difficult for outsource to India. And indeed, for many multinational corporations that need outsourcing, the Vietnamese name doesn't even appear on the technology map.

" A disadvantage of doing IT in Vietnam is that many people think we . work between rice fields and around wild grass growing ," Glass Egg CEO Charles Speyer said. In fact, the company's 140 employees are "staying" at a very modern property, only half a kilometer from Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City.

The big challenge for Glass Egg now is how to maintain its advantage over China. "China will definitely beat us about cheap prices," said Steve Reid, Glass Egg's business development manager. " If we want to survive for 5 years, we have to raise our value scale ." This means that Glass Egg must perform more difficult tasks of the design environment.

Reid said the company's first attempt was to shake hands with Electronic Arts to build a fictitious Middle East battlefield for Battlefield 2. War game. , the walls were wobbly, ramshackle because of guns, racing cars were just "beginner exercises," Reid said.

Trong Cam