Most of software firm employees are without IT degree, says study

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Sarwar Zahan
A majority of the people employed in the country's software firms are without institutional IT (information technology) degree, Bangladesh Association of Software & Information Services (BASIS) sources said.
The software companies have so far employed around 6,000 persons and most of them are from non-IT institutions and a majority of them have graduation or master's degree in other disciplines, they said.
A study conducted on local software firms found more than 85 per cent of the total technical recruits having no institutional IT degrees. More than 40 per cent of them possess graduation or master's degrees in non-IT subjects.
The study surveyed 55 software firms to find out the state of the technical job distribution in the sector.
More than 300 registered software companies are active in the country employing around 6,000 technical professionals.
The market size of software and IT-enabled service industry in the country is estimated at around Tk 3.0 billion a year, while it is estimated at Tk 10 billion in hardware like PC, server, network equipment and Internet and other network services.
The size of software segment in industry, mainly comprising customised and packaged software, excluding different types of IT-enabled services like multimedia, animation, digitisation etc., is estimated to be around Tk 1.50 billion per year.
The international software giants, including Microsoft, Oracle, Sun etc., cater to the lion's share of the packaged/licensed (off-the-shelf) software market segment. Local software companies mainly cater to the customised software development and maintenance segment of the market. Some international software vendors, however, have significant market presence in this segment, particularly in the banking sector, MNCs, telecom companies and some large donor-funded government projects.
Currently, more than 50 software and IT service companies have been exporting their services to 30 countries in the world, including the USA, Canada, European countries, Middle East, Japan, Australia, South Africa and some of the South East Asian countries.
Sources said this underlines the commitment and seriousness of the local software firms to the process of improvement initiatives.
More and more of the large projects including e-Governance projects, online banking projects etc., will be available on board and the role of the non-code activities will increase further at a matured stage of any software company, they said.
The local companies aiming to export are focusing on process and quality improvements in line with international requirements.