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Wednesday, 12 March 2014 00:52 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
By Shabiya Ali Ahlam
While Sri Lanka aspires to be a knowledge, commercial, naval, maritime, and aviation hub, the rapidly-growing IT sector is aspiring to promote the nation as a technological destination, making it an IT hub.
Emerging as a global IT/BPO destination in a number of key focus domain areas, Sri Lanka’s IT sphere came under fresh spotlight in 2013 when it was identified as the best offshore destination of the year.
According to Sri Lanka Association of Software Service Companies (SLASSCOM), the growing IT/BPO industry, in Colombo particularly, offers a unique advantage for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) to enjoy premium access to a high quality talent pool, which is becoming increasingly challenging in large established destinations such as India and China.
The environment is also noted to be highly conducive for establishing high-in-demand niche competency centres out of competition for even larger global services companies.
However, the question on how Sri Lanka will stand out as an IT destination in the South Asia region is yet to receive an affirmative answer.
How can Sri Lanka compete in the global arena to become an IT destination?
Although Sri Lanka has an unbeatable ambitious attitude, visiting Oracle Global Leader Channels and Embedded – Linux and Virtualisation Mickey Bharat at the recently-held Open Source Forum Sri Lanka 2014 said Sri Lanka has to explore Itself first before wanting to become an IT destination said.
With Sri Lanka being continuously compared with Singapore since it shares similar demographic characteristics, Bharat said: “Giving an outside in perspective on the topic, my view is that before wanting to become an IT destination Sri Lanka should explore itself. It should explore what it will be as an IT developer and provider. By exploring the services and brand, it will be able to make a name in the global economy. And when that happens, Sri Lanka will get the attention it needs as a hub.”
Shedding light on the success of Singapore in this regard, he said the nation successfully managed to capture industries outside its geographic boundaries where it took the benefits of several industries and aligned accordingly.
Advising Sri Lanka to do the same, Bharat opined developed elements being associated with the Lankan brand will help drive the required momentum.
“Sri Lanka is home to a lot of IT systems but many are unaware of this. This is because the front faces of the systems are not in Sri Lanka but in organisations in other countries. It is time to come out from behind and be exposed,” he said at a panel discussion that featured four other industry experts.
Sharing similar sentiments, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Head of Partners and Alliances for India and SAARC Vivek Gupta, amazed to observe many technology platform providers in Sri Lanka expressed confidence in the nation being a technology destination.
“However, you (Sri Lanka) need help in that regard. For this companies such as AWS can extend support with the programs it has in place to help entrepreneurs make a name in the market. The programs specifically target technology start-ups. If such platforms are leveraged on, Sri Lanka can take off,” noted Gupta.
Opportunities for SL to establish as a brand
Drawing attention to the fact that majority of innovations for technology takes place in the West, Virtusa Vice President and 
General Manager Madu Ratnayake observed this is due to IT consumption being high in that region.
However, while innovation comes up in the periphery of a problem, the consumption shifting to Asia is noted. “In Asia the technology sphere is growing at a tremendous pace. The region is leapfrogging in the mobile and telecom penetration. With the digital consumption shift comes opportunities to innovate around that,” he said.
This is made possible with the cost of technology start-up coming down with the availability of elements such as cloud. Nevertheless, prevailing are two factors, the cost of being able to create a technology company and the increasing access to technology, which provides the region with a plethora of opportunities in a number of areas.
“There are tremendous opportunities for innovation in the region and Sri Lanka is well positioned for that. There is a lot of development going on and the time is right for market access,” emphasised Madu.
Importance of working closely with IT sector to make SL a knowledge hub
Digital Commerce Lanka Chairman and SLIIT Co-Founder Thilan Wijesinghe expressing views as a former policy maker stressed the need to work on conjunction with the IT sector in making Sri Lanka knowledge hub.
Noting that there were only few IT companies and with software exports being only US$ 3 million at the time he was appointed BOI Chairman, he pointed out there were no tax holidays or proper IT infrastructure to take the industry forward.
The development of the industry primarily started with the premise that State universities are unable to ramp programs to increase the number of IT graduates. This soon became the seed to create the nation’s largest IT University, SLIIT.
Wanting to create an institute that was not governed by Government scriptures, SLIIT since its establishment has operated through an independent board despite being Government owned. It has had no changes in its senior management since its inception and has now grown to become the leading IT University in the country.
Acknowledging that at the time when the Government recognised the importance of creating IT parks it extended concessions to companies such as MIT, Wijesinghe said: “A lot more needs to be done. Sri Lanka needs to become a magnet in attracting talent and that is what Singapore has done well. This means we (Sri Lanka) need to look at the enabling environment from the viewpoints of cost of living, ease of starting a business, and ability of the country in attracting talent rather than being a net exporter of human resource.”
Key focus areas to make Sri Lanka an IT destination
Noting that although Sri Lanka is on the right track in becoming a technology destination, ICT Agency of Sri Lanka CEO Reshan Dewapura noted a lot more has to be done in terms of marketing.
Although there has been some marketing activity in this regard, he said a more has to be done if the nation is to reach the goal of becoming an IT hub.
According to Dewapura, Sri Lanka being a small country adds to the constrains but emphasising on that will not get the nation anywhere if it wants to be an IT hub, thus the need for marketing is more than necessary.
In addition to the marketing focus, Sri Lanka is should also pay attention to areas of supply chain resources.
Elaborating on the statement he said: “We have got over 5,000 graduates passing out per year but if we want to get to being a technological destination more resources are needed. This has to come from building the base of the pyramids.”
He added students should be equipped with IT knowledge from school level, while more IT degrees and courses should be introduced. This needs to be focused on alongside technology innovation development.
In this regard, SLASSCOM had taken up an initiative of providing incubators for technologies. However, Dewapura stressed the need to improve and increase such activities.
The need to retain talent
In the debate of ways of retaining IT talents, Bharat expressed that brands such as Google and Microsoft should be brought into the country.
“The people trained in this country are going for the Googles, Oracles and Microsofts since such companies represents better life for them. Sri Lanka should try to bring those brands in. Google was in the Chinese market so why can’t they come here? The Government needs to be reaching out to these organisations and extend incentives to get them here.
“That is what the Government can do to retain the talent which wants to go to places that seem more attractive. Bring all the big IT names here and give them the trade incentives to create that hub,” he said.
How to sustain large IT companies in SL?
While one way is to go to closer markets, Wijesinghe stressed the need to have “game changers” within the IT industry to attract attention.
Sharing an incident that took place during his tenure as BOI Chief where he nearly managed to bring in a leading IT company, he said while the IT giant wanted a Government contract that would allow it to test technologies in Sri Lanka, the Defence Ministry turned down the initiative stating such would compromise the nation’s security.
When questioning what it takes to get a game changing investment, Bharat answered by stating it is absolutely necessary to offer tax breaks and concessions. “If the Government is going for a game changer it has to attract financially. However, it should negotiate as well. It is about who the Government wants to bring, and the impact that can be made to the organisations in terms of employment. It is only then the notion of making Sri Lanka an IT destination will become real,” he said.
Adding to the comment, Ratnayake opined that acquisitions can also be used to bring in big companies. Referring to Intel, Accenture, and Pearson as few entities that came into Sri Lanka by acquiring small successful start-ups, he said: “While looking at the top down work, it is also important to create more start-ups that can get acquired. That is a channel that should be leveraged.”
Pix by Upul Abayasekara
CIO’s journey from data centre to CloudCloud technology has been much sought after since its conception, but it has been said that the transition is an expensive affair. While many CIOs would look at moving from data centres to cloud as a hassle, visiting Oracle Global Leader Channels and Embedded – Linux and Virtualisation Mickey Bharat noted there has been much misconception in this regard. The transition to cloud typically requires an IT department to move from a CAPEC to an OPEX model. While it may seem costly, CIOs look at the cloud environment to be a low cost OPEX model on user based service that has no infrastructure CAPEX investment. Although CIOs are keen on adapting to the cloud, the actual shift will take a few years to complete due to the placing of data sets. “Whilst putting the transformed data sets on a platform that can transport to a cloud, CIOs are going to have to control data centre costs. One of the key messages Oracle received from CIOs is while they are on their journey in moving towards the cloud, there is a need to standardise the data centres which is looked at as a problem,” he said. Bharat noted for this the data sets need to be virtualised in a platform that can be moved. For the CIOs to go ahead with their strategy it is observed that many hypervisors are being adopted in data centres. For this, he shared that Oracle has invested in R&D and open source. “We contribute to open source than most of other open source vendors. Oracle is driven to support this and the development that comes back in,” he said. With application via virtualisation being a new trend, he noted one of the challenges Oracle faces is that most of its virtualisation are in ‘tire one’ architecture. “If you put such architecture on the hypervisor, it is outside the management framework. It is not intelligent to know what is happening in the stack. Oracle has taken the integrated and engineered operating system hypervisors within the application stack, and this is the next stage of virtualisation,” stated Bharat. Speaking on how the technology can help the IT industry in Sri Lanka, Bharat said: “There is lot of innovation in this country and innovation defines leaders and followers. Sri Lanka is a leading technology country but it needs association with a leading brand to get it out across cross borders, and this oracle can provide.” |
