Honda UK is to develop a major software project in
Vietnam.
The motor manufacturer's decision to develop a new staff training
and personnel system overseas was driven by the low labour costs
and strong IT skills of the Vietnamese workforce. The new system
will help Honda meet its target of providing 12,000 annual man-days
of technical and commercial training for staff every year.
Honda's learning management system will be managed in the UK, with
software development and testing carried out by consultancy Harvey
Nash in Vietnam.
A growing number of UK companies, including supermarket chain
Somerfield, are moving their software development offshore in a bid
to reduce costs by using cheap, highly skilled labour in countries
such as India.
Analyst firm Gartner has predicted the European market for offshore
outsourcing will grow by more than 40% this year.
"Vietnam is quickly becoming a practical alternative to India in
terms of its offshore software development capability," said Paul
Smith, group marketing director at Harvey Nash. "It has a highly
skilled workforce and capital development costs may be as little as
65% of development costs in the UK."
The web-based system will be written in Java code and will run on
IBM's Websphere application server and Microsoft Windows Server
2000.