Employer Name | H-1B Visa Requests |
Group One Therapy | 169,666 |
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP | 87,096 |
Syntel, Incorporated | 43,252 |
Deloitte Consulting LLC | 38,252 |
Hps America Inc. | 37,616 |
Langeveld Bulb Co., Inc. | 32,000 |
Baton Rouge International Inc. | 31,483 |
Continental Graphics Inc. | 31,001 |
Ernst & Young LLP | 26,392 |
The Metal Kitchen | 25,000 |
Oracle Corporation | 23,352 |
Cisco Systems Inc. | 22,558 |
Tata Consultancy Services | 22,128 |
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young US | 19,255 |
Intel Corporation | 18,586 |
"Vietnam is not yet known for its software, but Vietnamese programmers have good skills. And we are cheaper than India and China," Hung said.
Based in Ho Chi Minh City, the software company had little money to promote itself abroad. But, like many other tech companies in Vietnam, Hung used another means to get the inside track on some of his high-powered deals -- contacts with fellow Vietnamese overseas already working in the industry.
With cheap, educated and plentiful labor, Vietnam's emerging information technology sector has mushroomed from a handful of software companies two years ago to at least 250 domestic and foreign-owned companies, said Truong Gia Binh, chief executive of Vietnam's largest Internet company, FPT.
It's only a matter of time before the Communist country becomes a full-fledged regional IT player, he said. IBM, HP, NTT -- they already accept the quality of Vietnamese programmers. Young Vietnamese IT people are very eager to take on the challenge of showing they can do more," he said.
The country's Communist leadership only allowed the Internet into Vietnam in 1997, and access is restricted through filtering software.
But that hasn't stopped information technology from blossoming into a $290 million market that could more than double by next year, according to the research firm IDG Vietnam. The country is starting to carve a niche for itself as a software development base for clients from North America, Europe and Japan, a new study suggests.
The report, released by Andersen Vietnam Ltd., finds some of the industry's leading names -- IBM, Cisco, Nortel, Hewlett-Packard, Sony and Fuji -- already sending work to Vietnam, although the overall value of contracts remains well below $10 million annually.
"If you want fast turnaround, go somewhere established like India. But if you're looking for a long-term, cost-effective partner, Vietnam has the potential to be that," said Marc Lopatin, director of Research Vietnam, the independent analyst who conducted the study.
The number of U.S. companies seeking to outsource the labor-intensive writing of code to cheaper locales will grow by 50 percent in the next two years, Forrester Research predicts.
Vietnamese programmers charge less than half what their counterparts in India make. Including overhead charges, corporate customers pay about $20,000 per person per year in Vietnam, compared with $30,000 in Russia or Romania and $40,000 in India, Research Vietnam says.