VietNamNet Bridge - The world’s leading software provider Oracle has thrown its weight behind Vietnam’s human resources training pushing the country to its ambitious information technology development objectives.

Better training outcomes are expected with Oracle’s heavyweight

Twenty-five Vietnamese universities signed up to join the Oracle Academy Programme last week, just a few days before the education and training sector celebrated the International Teachers’ Day, and set to integrate the Oracle Academy’s Advanced Computer Science programme into their IT curricula.

The integration will provide students from the participating universities with access to world-class technical curriculum and hands-on experience with Oracle’s industry-leading database and middleware software, enabling them to develop vital business and technology skills, gaining a competitive advantage as they prepare to enter the global workforce of the 21st century.

The Vietnamese universities’ participation is part of Oracle’s annualised $2.2 billion assistance to 3,400 institutions worldwide, including 1,200 educational institutions across Asia-Pacific, via the Oracle Academy Programme. “The quality and quantity of IT-savvy students in Vietnam have not fully met with the expectations of the industry,” said Quach Tuan Ngoc, general director of the Ministry of Education and Training’s IT Department, adding that the Vietnamese software now aimed to earn $1 billion from IT exports annually.

“Human resource training plays a vital role [in the realisation of the target] and the world’s latest software must be integrated into local IT training activities,” he said. Ngoc said while individual Vietnamese universities could buy Oracle’s technologies and solutions for training, they would find it difficult to understand the products.

“With Oracle’s assistance, the universities will be facilitated to train in its technology to catch up society’s demand and the world’s IT advancements,” Ngoc said. Oracle Vietnam and Indochina general director Ho Thanh Tung said under the cooperation programme, IT students in the participating universities would have better conditions to be intensively trained in advanced computer science, while non-IT students in the banking, finance and other faculties would also be able to soak up the Enterprise Business Application knowledge.

“By working together, the Oracle Academy and these universities are making a direct investment into the development of the Vietnam information technology community and helping to create advanced technical learning opportunities for our students,” he said.

Established in September 2005 as the first wholly American-owned IT company to get a licence in Vietnam after the US embargo was lifted, Oracle Vietnam has assisted the training of some 6,000 local IT consultants. Tung said the local IT training sector could still not meet the domestic and international software engineering industry’s human resources demand and objectives.

Citing statistics from the Vietnam Software Association (Vinasa), he said there were just a small number of Vietnamese IT firms employing over 1,000 engineers. Some 150 local IT companies had between 100-150 software engineers, he said. While contending Vietnam is qualified to respond to the global demand for IT human resources, Tung said “a lot more IT professionals need to be trained”.

According to the Vinasa, the world will fall short of three million IT workers by 2010 and 10 million by 2020.

India is the world’s biggest IT employer today with around 1.3 million software engineers, followed by China with 1.2 million and the US with one million.

(Source: VIR)