REGIONAL> Highlights
Software management institute set up in Dalian
By Zhu Chengpei and Zhang Xiaomin (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-18 16:19

DALIAN: China’s first software management institute was set up Monday in the coastal city of Northeast China’s Liaoning province.

“The cultivation of high-level software professionals will facilitate the further development of the country’s IT sector,” said Vice Mayor Dai Yulin, also President of Dalian Software Industry Management Institute (SIMI).

“SIMI is China’s first software management institute that is positioned to train high-level software talents,” said Dai.

According to him, the software practitioners’ capacities can not meet the demand of the software sector’s growth.

“Therefore, we need to cultivate more advanced professionals with outstanding capacities in leadership, management, and marketing,” he said.

SIMI’s program is warmly welcomed by the local software practitioners.

The first group of 24 trainees comes from 15 enterprises like Neusoft, NEC and HP.

“We can learn from the seasoned teachers here and improve our abilities in managing practices,” said Zhao Gang, a trainee from a local software company.

According to the teaching plan of the institute, SIMI will train 1,000 advanced managers and 1,600 primary management staff in the next three years.

Dai Yulin said the city had accumulated a potential advantage in the talents pool with Dalian Neusoft Institute of Information, China’s first and biggest software institute.

“We now have about 70,000 people that are engaged in the city’s software sector. More than 40,000 of them have over three years’ working experience,” Dai introduced.

“Some of them can be trained to be advanced managers,” he added.

Those qualified trainees may get a subsidy of as much as 80 percent of the tuition fee from Dalian’s special fund for software talents, according to a SIMI pamphlet.

“Enterprises will rely more on the high-level qualified talents to upgrade its leadership and management in order to cope with the global crisis,” said Sun Zhenyao, Honorary President of SIMI and Board Chairman of HiSoft Technology International Ltd, one of the founders of the institute.

Dalian Mayor Xia Deren joined Sun at the opening ceremony.

“The IT sector is not safe from the global economic turmoil. I think the companies can take it as an opportunity to make preparation for the future,” Xia said.

“After 10 years’ development, Dalian’s software and service outsourcing industry has developed rapidly. What we need most now is advanced talents, especially high-level management professionals. We can take this opportunity to reserve more talents for the further development,” he suggested.