“Vietnam attracts a high number of foreign firms thanks to the high quality of the labor force. The qualifications of Vietnamese IT engineers are in no way inferior to the rest of th world, while the wages are lower,”  Pierre Bonnet, CEO of Orchestra Networks Vietnam, said.

Orchestra Networks is a French firm which provides software solutions for data management. The company has operations in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, but it only carries out R&D activities in France in Vietnam. There are nearly 50 technology engineers specializing in developing products in Vietnam, and the company plans to double the number in the next two years.

“The Vietnamese engineers at Orchestra Networks Vietnam have qualifications equal to engineers in France. That is why Vietnam is the only non-French country which has an R&D division,” he said.

Dasan Zhone Solutions, which provides technological solutions for network infrastructure to buildings, also came to Vietnam because it was attracted by the high quality of IT workforce, not only because of market opportunities.

Some years ago, the US-based company set up an R&D center in Vietnam before establishing a subsidiary. Dasan Zhone Solutions Vietnam now has 90 workers and most of them are doing R&D.

Jong Hyun Park, CEO of Dasan Zhone Solutions Vietnam predicted that it would become an IT center for ASEAN and a big R&D global center, together with China and India. 

Meanwhile, GoBear, an integrated search engine for insurance and finance products from Singapore, set up a division of developers in HCMC. The developers are selected in Vietnam and are in charge of new features and technologies that serve GoBear’s long-term development strategy in the regional market.

According to Ivonne Bojoh, CTO, GoBear and many other technology firms are considering HCMC as the ‘Silicon Valley of the Eastern World’ because of the high qualifications of Vietnamese developers.

Vietnam now is making big investments to improve the supply and quality of the workforce for the IT industry. It has many universities, both state-owned and private, and junior colleges involved in the training of workers for the industry.

Besides the traditional training model, Vietnam is also stepping up online training. Funix University became the first online training establishment in 2015.

This is the first university in Vietnam that granted a bachelor’s degree, professional certificates and practices soft skills for the IT industry. Students have eight semesters at Funix and pay VND100 million for one training course.

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Mai Chi