Wednesday, Oct 22, 2008
Gulf News
Dubai: Bangladesh is gradually becoming part of the global outsourcing and software services destination for global corporations, officials at Gitex told Gulf News.
"Software export has achieved the highest growth in recent years, as more than 100 software and IT service companies are exporting their services to 30 countries," a spokesperson from Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (Basis), the national trade association representing software and IT services companies of Bangladesh, said.
Bangladesh is now connected to Submarine Cable Network SEA-ME-WE-4, which provides an internet bandwidth of 24 GB. Currently, all the major cities within the country are connected through high-speed fibre optic backbone. All parts of the country are accessible though internet provided by the 'last mile connectivity' through wireless (GPRS/Edge or Wi-Max technology).
"Currently, there are about 500 software development companies active in Bangladesh, employing more than 5,000 qualified professionals," Tauhidul Haque, manager of software services, at Leadsoft, told Gulf News yesterday.
"A fifth of them are exporting services and solutions to Europe and the United States, including data entry, outsourcing, software solutions, migrations and integration to new platforms as well as enterprise resource planning and business process re-engineeing. We have regular export services to Denmark, Norway, Sudan and the Netherlands."
His company employs 180 people, including 80 software engineers, generating 700 million takas a year.
"We are a moderate size company offering solutions to banks, financial institutions, small and medium size enterprises, pharmaceutical, retail and industries," Haque said.
Five Bangladeshi software developers are participating at Gitex this year. "The response is good. We are having a lot of response from Kuwaiti, Saudi and Omani companies for services," Nurun Nabi, an exhibitor, said.
Gulf News 2008. All rights reserved.
