Emulate Irish software industry - Valista chairman

According to the Irish Software Association (ISA) the Irish software sector is a significant part of Ireland's technology industry. The sector has created the type of high-skilled, high-paid employment, generally associated with strong productivity growth.

While foreign owned multinationals have been a major contributor to the overall growth of the economy, the highly skilled indigenous software sector has emerged in Ireland. It has made a significant contribution to the Irish economy.

Turnover in the software industry in Ireland was Sterling 15 billion in 2004 accounting for 13% of the total Irish exports. The software industry accounts for 25% of the IT sector's contribution to the Irish economy.

by Surekha Galagoda and Gamini Warushamana

Valista, an eminent software company in Ireland has set up one of its largest R&D centres in Sri Lanka. The executive chairman of Valista, Raomal Perera said that the Irish software industry has many insights to offer Sri Lanka.

Following are excerpts of his interview with the Sunday Observer.

Ireland is a very small country, with a population of 4.25 million. The main reason for its booming IT industry was its very clear plan to develop the industry. They foresaw the importance of IT.

In the 1970s Ireland was in a very difficult situation and the country was close to bankruptcy. The Government at the time launched a development strategy to develop the IT industry and the policies did not change though the Governments changed.

The excellent civil service of Ireland helped the implementation process. Governments came and went but the policies did not change.

They started with manufacturing and later moved on to R&D working for US companies. They developed intellectual properties for US companies and more and more US investments flowed into the country. In parallel, many support industries were set up. Universities produced young professionals.

Setting up the European Union was another plus point and the young engineers who obtained experience by working in US R&D companies started their own software companies.

These young engineers led to the success of Ireland. I am one of them, who worked for US R&D companies and started my own business using that experience.

We are successful in financial services and other areas. Today a number of things are happening, new opportunities such as bio technology are emerging in Ireland. But the seed of Ireland's success was software and IT industry.

Today, Ireland is the second largest software producer in the world. Perera said that Sri Lanka can be proud of the talented pool of software engineers the country has today.

I met teachers from the IT Faculty of the University of Moratuwa and they produce good engineers that the industry needs today. However, lack of communication skills is a big problem they face.

Lack of fluency in English is not the only issue. Culturally we always tend to take a back seat. The whole system is responsible for this backwardness and from school upwards we should develop our children's communication skills, get good grading and be always forward.

The best example is US and from childhood they train children to develop their communication skills and give them confidence. These qualities are essential for software engineers.

Unfortunately most of our talented professionals do not show these skills and we have to nurture these skills in them. I am not undervaluing their knowledge, but we must play first fiddle. The University of Moratuwa has recognised this and now they have included presentation skills as well to the curriculum.

We have very smart engineers. We get top talented students to our universities. People is not the challenge and we have to mould them. At Valista too we have trainee software engineers and we develop their skills.

Software industry

The software industry of Sri Lanka itself has this backward thinking and we always play second fiddle to India.

This attitude is bad. We should not be subservient to India. We can't play in numbers and compete with India that is true, but we can build a strong IT centre in Sri Lanka, cater to a niche market and play in value. Ireland and Israel are clear examples. Both are small countries but they have succeeded in this industry.

Perera said that peace is one of the important factors for the development of the software industry in the country. It is essential for the development of the country as a whole.

The Government must have strong commitment to peace and that commitment should be demonstrated to the world. Strategies to achieve peace may be different, it can be military or otherwise but it should be consistent and the Government should show a strong commitment to peace.

Thirty years ago the situation in Ireland was also similar. But the country overcame the problems and Irish people who were scattered around the world started to return.

After Northern Ireland achieved peace there is an economic boom. Belfast, the capital of North Ireland is fast growing today.

We asked Perera how Valista markets its products and how his clients respond when most critical software solutions that run their business are serviced by a country always making headlines of terrorist attacks and war.

The conflict and resulting bad image of the country really affects the industry. We market our products under Valista and we are an Irish company. But genuine Sri Lankan companies may face difficulties.

Sri Lanka should build a very strong ICT platform. There are many success stories such as Virtusa.

It is a role model and the company was originally based in Sri Lanka though it has now gone to India.

Hsenid and Millennium IT are also very successful companies.

Valista has Sri Lankan roots, not only because one of its main R&D centres is in Sri Lanka. Raomal Perera, a Sri Lankan studied up to the Advanced Level at St. Joseph's College, Colombo.

He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Engineering from the University College Swansea, UK in 1979. After his graduation he worked for British Leyland Systems in computer system designing and was interested in computing. In 1983 he married an Irish girl and migrated to Ireland where he joined several US technology companies that set up R&D centres.

In 1991, co-founder and VP of Engineering of ISOCOR, a leading provider of mail and directory server software set up ISOCOR's R&D centre in Ireland.

In 1999 he was the co-founder of Network 365, a leading provider of a comprehensive payments and mobile service delivery suite, and later he became the CEO. Established in 2003 following the merger of Network 365 and iPIN, Valista is a global company with offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Japan.

Growth potential

The challenge we faced constantly was that we had to always prove to the parent company that we can produce good quality software in Ireland. We did it and delivered the product on time. Today Sri Lanka too has to convince the world that we can produce good quality software.

We saw the growth potential of the IT industry but we did not expect this kind of massive boost. The software industry in Ireland now faced new challenges. One is the HR issue. There is a trend that young engineers want to move up in managerial positions.

This reduces the quality of the engineers and lose their knowledge and technical expertise. Now this is an issue in Ireland.

Sri Lanka should address this issue by developing HR on dual tracks, from engineers to managers and engineers to architects. We should not lose the brain power. In Ireland we have engineers with 25-30 years' experience but are up in the hierarchy. Today it is difficult to find software engineers here with five to six years' experience.

Perera said that Eastern European countries such as Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary are emerging as new software developing countries. They have a very good education system and specially the mathematics skills of the students are good.

However, the growth of the industry in those countries too is restrained by communication skills. Sri Lanka can compete with these Eastern European countries.

Still Sri Lanka is not well known for software and we have to build a strong brand for software similar to tea and tourism.

The software industry will not be limited to a small segment of the country. Development of the industry will create opportunities in many supporting industries and the benefits would be passed on to the whole country. We witnessed this in Ireland, Perera said.

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