Japan, Vietnam firms open R&D centre

HCM City (VNA) - Vietnamese and Japanese software companies FPT Software Co and Hitachi Joho Ltd launched a joint research and development centre in the city last Saturday.

The Hitachi Joho-FPT R&D Centre will have five Japanese experts and 60
Vietnamese developers working together to come up with attractive products
for foreign investors.

FPT Software and Hitachi Joho expect to expand the centre in scale by at
least four times by 2010, and become the largest Japanese player in the
country's software industry, officials say.

The Japanese company also plans to support FPT's training work by hosting
Vietnamese coders to improve their skills and management expertise.

"One of the current most urgent issues of Japan's IT industry is the
necessity to provide IT services at low cost, while lacking IT technicians.
Therefore, shifting production work to foreign countries is obvious.

Previously, Hitachi Joho placed China at the focus of our global map, and
now we expand our focus to Vietnam , starting with the cooperation with
FPT Company in software development," said Hara Iwao, general director of
Hitachi Joho.

Currently, revenues earned from cooperative projects between Hitachi Corp
and FPT have accounted for more than 17 percent of the latter's earnings,
and the new venture is expected to boost this further.

Besides the R&D centre, the Japanese partner plans to set up a centre to
collect data on the ties between Vietnam and Japan and also get
involved in providing training services at Vietnamese universities and
colleges, including the FPT College.-Enditem