99X Technology shares global software product engineering expertise in Sri Lanka
Thursday, 27 June 2013 01:32
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With the IT-BPO industry exhibiting a high paced growth in Sri Lanka to becoming a billion dollar industry by 2016 and presently being among the top 20 outsourcing destinations globally, Colombo Camp Community, backed up and principally sponsored by 99X Technology, shared immense knowledge and expertise with its seven international speakers at the recently concluded Software Product Engineering Conference (SPEC 2013).
The event which is organised for the first time, in its nature was two-fold; the business and technical aspects of the software product life-cycle. This gave a blend that resulted in a rather interesting and interactive session from the audience of over 350, consisting CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, Software Team Leads, Architects, Analysts, and Product Managers from various tech companies.
99X Technology CEO Mano Sekaram, during his speech, stated that 50% of companies in Sri Lanka are engaged in building software products which is a stark contrast to India where almost 80% of them are software services companies with most engaged in outsourcing, quoting a recent A.T. Kearney’s report. ‘‘Sri Lanka has a passion to build software with its vast amount of knowledge and skills among ourselves. We experience many start-ups every year which is incredibly impressive.’’
‘‘We have a belief that any well run value-centric company can contribute to the industry in many tangible ways. Business is always not about money, it’s more about creating value for our stakeholders.’’
‘‘If we as a company want to do well, we also want the industry to prosper amongst partners, investors, faculties and universities. This is our duty to help the competencies of the local industry.’’ Whilst many could probably ask as to why such event of this nature is being organised, Sekaram enlightened the audience by quoting the Dalai Lama, “Share knowledge and it’s the way to achieve immortality”.
The business aspects stressed out that five areas need to be thoroughly strategised for any techie start-up or giants looking forward to move into providing world class software product engineering. These were road-mapping, complex software, investment strategy, API’s and partners, and aligning and shaping the overall business strategy.
This continued over to the technical topics including lean requirement management, how to accelerate growth with Cloud technology, overview on how product architecture is a specialised niche, the importance of making quality visible in product engineering, the mobility needs of modern enterprise products, and why practice of automation is priority for productivity enhancement.
Export revenues from the IT-BPO sector grew by 22% yearly recording $ 500 million, an increase from $ 436 million, $ 355 million and $ 82 million in 2012, 2011 and 2005 respectively, resulting in the fifth largest export-earning sector creating over 60,000 employment opportunities, with over 180,000 indirect employment opportunities.
