VietNamNet Bridge – Though cloud
computing services just appeared in Vietnam, analysts believe that the services
will rapidly develop in Vietnam
thanks to its advantages.

 

There still
are several arguments about “inputting data into the clouds”. However, it is
undeniable that cloud computing, which is now a growing trend in the world,
will also be a growing trend in Vietnam.

 

According
to IDC, the global cloud computing market now has a total turnover of $68 billion.
The applications in businesses in Asia alone, except Japan, can generate a turnover of
$1.3 billion. The region has been witnessing a high growth rate of 40 percent
per annum and the growth rate is expected to sustain itself until 2014.

 

According
to Stephane Kimmerline, Marketing Director of Microsoft Vietnam, the
cloud computing technology has been changing the way of applying information
technology at enterprises. He has affirmed that services will develop rapidly
in the time to come, since cloud computing allows businesses to become more
flexible in developing and expanding business operations. The new technology
allows to satisfy the demand of enterprises with low operation costs.
“Therefore, Microsoft has been targeting Vietnamese enterprises with a demand
for flexible solutions,” he said.

 

FPT-IS
Company has also joined the market of providing application software to
businesses by becoming a partner which implements the solutions of
Salesforce.com in Vietnam.
Nguyen Tuan Hung, Deputy General Director of FPT-IS, said now is the right time
to begin with cloud computing. FPT-IS has chosen Salesforce because this is the
software application provider that is pioneering cloud computing technology,
while the customer relationship management solution Salesforce CRM is used at
nearly 90,000 enterprises worldwide.

 

According
to Hung, cloud CRM is a growing technology which will gradually replace
traditional CRMs that require heavy investments and the maintenance of costly
equipments. With cloud computing, enterprises can access  Salesforce CRM via the internet by leasing
users, and they do not have to install any hardware or software. The “services
on the cloud” can provide anything enterprises need and at the lowest possible
costs.

 

In Vietnam, many foreign invested enterprises such
as Dell, Prudential, ANZ or Capital
Land have been using the
solution, especially the enterprises which need to have professional customer
care networks. The web-based customer-oriented applications can help
enterprises have good interactions with customers and help crate a social
network which allows users to share experiences and show their demands,
therefore, this can help enterprises react promptly and timely.

 

Prudential
began applying Salesforce CRM in 2009. Dao Huu Phuc, a senior executive of
Prudential Vietnam said that before using CRM Salesforce, Prudential Vietnam
used the traditional three-tier CRM. However, in 2009, when the company pushed
up sales, it tried to find out a flexible CRM which allowed staff and sales
agent to access it easily anytime and anywhere. Therefore, the company decided
to use Salesforce. Phuc said that the total cost of ownership TCO has decreased
by 20 percent.

 

Meanwhile,
the Long Hau Industrial Zone is the first client of Microsoft in Vietnam which
uses Microsoft Dynamic ERP – Software-Plus-Services. Doan Hong Dung, General
Director of Long Hau, said that Long Hau is a mixed industrial zone with many
fields, therefore, the company has chosen the solution, hoping that this will
bring the most benefits to clients.

 

“The demand
of clients has become more and more complicated, therefore, Long Hau needs to
increase productivity and rationalize operational processes in order to
increase the business efficiency,” he added.

 

Source:
Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon

VietNamNet Bridge – The high percentage of drop-outs cause a headache to the provinces in the central region and Mekong Delta. Many students have given up schools because they are busy working to earn money for their families.

It has been one week since The schools in Quang Ngai province have returned to their normal working after a long Tet holiday. However, hundreds of students in six mountainous districts, including Ba To, Son Ha, Minh Long, Son Tay, Tra Bong and Tay Tra, still have not come back to school.

Chief Secretariat of the Quang Ngai provincial education and training department Nguyen Ngoc Tuu has confirmed that in these districts, only 85 percent of students have returned to classes, and that hundreds of students have not turned up.

Explaining this, Tuu explains that it is now the harvest season for dot tree (a type of tree used to make brooms), therefore, many students have to help their families to earn their living. Besides, some other students want to prolong the Tet holiday, therefore, they have not come to class. Tuu says that the students will come back to school in the second half of the first month of the lunar year.

Director of the Education and Training Department of Binh Dinh province Tran Van Quy reports that 2000 students in the province have given up school after the end of the first semester. Especially, high schools have the highest percentage of drop-outs:1400 students. Their bad results at school and  difficult financial situation have been cited as the main reasons.

Thanh Hoa province has also reported that many students in the province have given up school to pick dot and bong lau trees to earn money. These trees are called by local residents as the “gifts from the forest” and are harvested only in dry season. Every student can earn 50,000-70,000 dong a day from picking and selling dot and bong lau, therefore, they would rather go working than to school.

The report released by the Thanh Hoa Education and Training Department on February 16 showed that by the end of the first semester of the 2010-2011 academic year, 2000 students had reportedly dropped out. Most of them are living in mountainous areas. These include 1172 high school students and 841 secondary school students.

The same is happening in Mekong River Delta. Teachers in the provinces have to go to students’ families to persuade parents to let their children go to school. But without success because most students are still busy working with their parents to earn the living.

In Ca Mau, not only students in remote areas, but also those in  the city have also given up school. After the Tet holiday, 240 students of the Ca Mau High School reported that they have to work for money.

The number of students at the Ca Mau High School has dropped from 4160 to 3920. The school headmaster Tran Hong Chau says that the regulation that tuitions for the year have to be paid in one installment has caused big difficulties for poor households. As a result, many students have to give up school because they do not have the money.

In Soc Trang province, Pham Thi Cam Tu, Headmaster of Nguyen Khuyen High School said that the number of students has decreased by 4.7 percent. “We have been told that many students have given up schools to go working,” she says.

The high percentage of drop-outs causes a headache to many provinces. However, there is no easy solution because parents say their children need to earn their living first before thinking of going to school. Some parents have told teachers that they will only let their children return to school if local authorities give them rice and food.

Headmaster of Tu Diem Primary School in Soc Trang province Nguyen Van Von said that the sea water has penetrated the poor district and flooded the farm lands. Therefore, local residents have to leave villages for other localities to work for other people. As children follow their parents and drop out from schools.

C. V

VietNamNet Bridge – The European Union (EU) will continue its aid assistance for Vietnam even when Vietnam joins the group of middle-income countries, Chief of the EU mission to Vietnam Sean Doyle and Hungarian Ambassador Vizi Laszlo confirmed in a talk with VietNamNet’s Vietnam Economic Forum (VEF) on January 24.

 

Chief of the EU mission to Vietnam Sean Doyle

With the total ODA committed in 1996-1999 of $10 billion, the EU is the second bilateral ODA donor for Vietnam.

However, the EU’s current ODA policy for Vietnam will end at the end of 2013. Vietnam is now in the group of middle-income countries. This year the EU will work out an appropriate aid policy for Vietnam.

Ho Quang Minh, Chief of the Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Foreign Economic Relations, says that one of the problems for middle-income countries is the fast reduction of ODA.

However, Ambassador Sean Doyle said that Vietnam should not be so worried about the reduction of ODA because many middle-income countries still receive international assistance. Vietnam has become a middle-income country but it still has many poor people. Vietnam’s remote and underdeveloped regions still need assistance.

“The EU will still be an ODA donor for Vietnam. I think that Vietnam is using ODA very well,” Doyle said.

However, experts still worry about the “middle-income trap”. This is when a country moves from a poor to a middle-income country but is unable to become a developed country, even after many decades.

Many other countries have been caught in this trap. Thetypical examples in Asia are Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

Hungarian Ambassador Vizi Laszlo says that the comparative advantages that helped Vietnam develop fast recently and become a middle income country will disappear. When Vietnamese’s income rises, workers’ salaries will also rise and Vietnam will lose its main advantage – cheap labor.

He says that Vietnam needs to change its economic model to not depend on cheap labor and the export of low value-added products.

Ambassador Sean Doyle believes that corruption is also one of the causes of the middle-income trap. “It is dangerous because capital and social resources will not be invested in developing the country but will go to the pockets of some officials,” he says.

 

Hungarian Ambassador Vizi Laszlo 

Another trap is free trade. When the country integrates into the world economy, tariff and non-tariff barriers are gradually removed. Goods from more developed countries will flood its market.

According to Doyle, it is a threat but it is not too dangerous because there will be a long negotiation time during which Vietnam canadjust its economy.

In recent years, Vietnam’s exports of its competitive goods like agricultural products or footwear have been facing a lot of difficulties in Europe. Vietnam and the EU’s recentlybegan the negotiation of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) which gives  Vietnamese producers some hope of entering the picky market.

Ambassador Doyle said that the current issues of Vietnamese goods are quality and safety. “We can’t help if products don’t meet quality and safety standards. Because there are rules that anyone has to obey,” Doyle said.

Explaining the anti-dumping tax on some Vietnamese products, Doyle said that the reason is the shortage of transparency in information and production resources which results  in vague production cost.

Some analysts say that the public debt crisis in Europe can harm global trade and Asia’s exports to Europe but the two ambassadors confirm that the threat is not remarkable now. This has been proven by Vietnam’s exports to Europe in 2010 which still grew by 16 percent.

Ambassadr Vizi Laszlo says that the crisis is one of the driving forces for some Asian countries to change their development models.

“Some countries that depended on export have focused on local consumption. Some others that focus on savings have gradually transferred to consumption economy,” he says.

Ambassador Doyle says that the biggest lesson for Vietnam is considering its spending and to further economize. It is also important to provide transparent and accurate data about the economy.

Lan Huong

VietNamNet Bridge – After the racing for the turnover of 100 trillion dong in 2010, the Military Telecom Company (Viettel) and the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT) declare a new war as they have both set up new targets for 2011 – the turnover of 130 trillion

Profit: it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other

In early 2010, the news on the telecom market was that VNPT and Viettel joined a new race to obtain the turnover of 100 trillion dong.

 

In fact, VNPT set up a more modest goal at first, of 94 trillion dong in 2010, which would be an increase of 20 percent in comparison with 2009. The leaders of the economic group said that they anticipated big difficulties in 2010 so they only dared to set up such a modest target.

Several days later, Viettel announced the targeted turnover of 96 trillion dong for 2010, which would represent a 60 percent growth rate in comparison with 2009.

this would mean that VNPT would lose its first position on the telecom market. Therefore, VNPT decided to increase the targeted turnover to 100 billion dong for 2010.

Then, with the ambition of jumping into the first position on the market, Viettel also decided to adjust its targeted turnover to 100 billion dong.

Finally, VNPT announced it has fulfilled the business plan, obtaining the turnover of 101,569 billion dong in 2010. With the figure, VNPT confirmed that it was the only telecom company that couldobtain the turnover of over 100 trillion dong in 2010. Viettel’s turnover was more modest at 90 trillion dong.

However, analysts say the turnover figures are not everything. An analyst says that directors can be described as talented painters who can polish their figures and make them more beautiful. Therefore it would be better not to compare the turnover, but to consider their profits.

Some months ago, Harvard’s Professor Michael Porter, the leading expert in competitive strategy, for the first time released the report on competitiveness of Vietnam based on objective figures. Many experts believe that the report should be the good foundation for the information technology and communication industry in Vietnam.

The professor said that in many business fields, Vietnamese enterprises have been facing difficulties just because they have been trying to use the same methods and compete in prices. Competitions should be seen from the angle of profit, not turnover.

In fact, the gap between the turnover and profit of VNPT and Viettel is narrow. While VNPT obtained 11,200 billion dong in profit in 2010, the figure of Viettel was 10,687 billion dong. VNPT paid 8450 billion dong to the state budget, while Viettel paid 7315 billion dong.

How will the new race be?

In a recent survey, Viettel announced the targeted growth rate of 19 percent for 2011, and the expected turnover of 109 trillion dong. However, Buu dien Vietnam (Vietnam Post) newspaper has quoted its sources as saying that Viettel plans to get 130 trillion dong in 2011.

Meanwhile, VNPT has also set the goal of 130 trillion in turnover in 2011.

though the targeted turnover is the same, the targeted profits are different. If they both get 130 trillion dong in turnover as expected, VNPT would get the profit of 11,800 billion dong, while Viettel would get the profit of 17,106 billion dong. This obviously means the big challenge for VNPT.

Experts say that both VNPT and Viettel will rely on their income from mobile phone services. VNPT has two mobile networks MobiFone and VinaPhone, and it also has income from broad band Internet and fixed line services. Meanwhile, 60 percent of Viettel’s income comes from mobile phone services. Besides, it can also get money from real estate, phone distribution and Internet services.

Source: Dau tu