This new solar power station, comprising of 1,092 solar panels and 21 adapters, can directly provide the company with around 321,000KWh of electricity per year without using rechargeable batteries, equivalent to electricity consumed by 500 households in Vietnam.

This is the first and only solar power station built by Intel Corporation in Asia, many times bigger than the ones assembled by Intel in Israel and in Oregon, in the US.

In related news, on April 23, Nokia Corporation began construction of its mobile phone factory in the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park in the northern province of Bac Ninh.

The 17-hectare factory is expected to become fully operational by the beginning of next year. To be built at a total investment of $302 million, it will produce around 180,000 mobile phones per year and provide jobs for more than 10,000 workers with an average income of $300 per person per month.

Source: SGGP

Below are the characteristics of a good website scan tool:
• Should be designed to understand the business/website model.
• Should be able to evaluate website security risks.
• Should be updated regularly.
• Should have easy to use website scan dashboard.
• Should provide detailed technical information.
• Should provide easy to understand reports.
• Should provide detailed risk analysis.
• Should provide feasible technical solutions.

There are many benefits that you can reap using these security tools:
• Keep data secure from any infections.
• Increase website availability.
• Gain visitor trust by providing a safe and secure environment.
• Proactive approach against security threats.
• A security assurance seal from a reputed website security provider helps you enhance brand reputation.
• Websites that are more secure gain higher rankings in search engines.

Under the strategy, the value of the science and technology (S&T) market will increase by an average of 15-17 per cent per year.

In reality, outsourcing projects are often badly planned and mismanaged, resulting in project delays, rising costs, soaring frustration levels and cross-cultural misunderstandings. In the end, cheap is expensive.

Why? Indians, Czechs, Poles and other nationalities that are considered outsourcing-friendly are usually extremely well-qualified and speak excellent English, albeit with an accent. This means that qualifications and language cannot account for the delays and misunderstandings so common in outsourced projects. The answer very often lies in the major but little appreciated aspect of cultural differences, and the different ways of "signaling" to business counterparts things such as importance, emotion and urgency.

Generally stated, international business cultures can be categorized into "task-oriented" (Scandinavians, German speakers, parts of the U.S. and the UK, for instance), and "relationship-oriented cultures" (India, Asia, Latin American, Southern and Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, parts of the U.S. and the UK, for example). Crudely, task-oriented cultures tend to focus onthings -- contracts, facts, deadlines, etc -- rather than people. Relationship-oriented cultures consider people -- business dinners, small talk, sharing emotions -- of greater importance thanthings or even time itself.

Germany is a classic task-oriented culture. German managers often believe that their outsourced partners can be managed via email, with the occasional phone call thrown in to stress the urgency of some matter, followed up -- perhaps -- by an in-country visit once a year. All their home-based staff has to do is provide their Romanian or Indian counterparts with clearly stated data and milestones. Job done. For them, clearly defined parameters, deadlines and detailed contracts guarantee project success. How do business partners build trust? Through reliable, measurable behavior -- a deadline is universally understandable, right? Who needs to go to dinner? Besides, that would simply increase business expenses and result in nothing tangible.

But most of the world's seven billion people -- from Asia to the Middle East, Latin America to Southern Europe and beyond -- live in relationship-oriented cultures. Here, a handshake is of equal or greater importance than a contract, dinner with your business partner of more significance than some milestone. For relationship-oriented cultures, people are more important than things. "If a deadline is missed, come over, we'll talk about it and work things out. But tell me, how is your cousin doing..?"

In managing outsourced projects, task-oriented managers often prefer to use email, because it is quick, efficient and cheap. Often they believe that words such as URGENT!!! in the subject line -- bright red, of course -- means "please do now." A relationship-oriented counterpart, however, located in California or Mumbai often simply ignores or deletes this message. For them, "urgent" indicates factory on fire, boss kidnapped, war has broken out -- thus if it's urgent, don't email me -- burst into my office. Email, they reason, is cold, impersonal and thus unemotional; if something were truly "urgent" my counterpart would call, or better yet Skype or, best of all, fly out to talk to me -- or fly me to his headquarters.

Furthermore, task and relationship oriented cultures often possess different ideas of what "ASAP" signifies. My German clients believe it's synonymous with "immediately"; my British partner, in contrast, tells me it means "as soon as it is possible for me." Thus, it could take up to a week for him to do an "ASAP" task. In other words, for relationship-oriented cultures, the more important something is, the greater the need to have a face-face-meeting; if it is of lesser importance, email is fine. Just don't expect a reply.

In the end, the intangible costs of these subtle yet crucial cultural interpretations and "signaling" often offset the initial financial gains of outsourcing. Which type should defer to the other? Well, just looking at population figures, relationship-oriented cultures, including 1.1 billion Chinese, 350 million Arabs and 1.2 billion Indians, far outnumber, say, five million Finns. To ensure deadline commitment and on-time, in-budget, smoothly running international projects, the basic rule is: spend quality time with your relationship-oriented partner. Eat with him. Ask about his family. And remember: relationships get results.

Once the draft decree gets approval and takes effects, the “big guys” in the field of digital content, such as Google and Facebook, would be officially present in Vietnam.

Source: TBKTSG

Outsourcing is a huge industry here in Vietnam. It solves several problems for Vietnam. First, it brings in much needed income. Second, it does so without requiring a high ratio of expensive imported inputs (compare this to making shoes which are exported for a cheap price, but most of the costs come from materials which must be imported). Third, it helps advance domestic use of technology, which should make all industries more efficient.

Customers have a choice when choosing a destination for their software outsourcing needs. Why do they choose Vietnam? The primary reason would be cost. Vietnam has a low cost of living (which is rapidly being degraded by endemic inflation) and thus a low labor cost. A rule of thumb is that an Indian engineer can make half what an American engineer makes, while a Vietnamese engineer can make still half of what an Indian engineer makes. India, which has made a name for itself as a global leader and destination in software outsourcing, can now look to Vietnam as a supplier which they manage.

Another reason that companies choose Vietnam for outsourcing is the pool of talent. Young Vietnamese people see the IT industry as a large source of employment with attractive salaries even with little experience. The wages and work conditions certainly beat working in a factory. And their parents view education as an investment worth pouring money into.

But education is only a piece of what can make a Vietnamese outsourcing industry successful. A complaint about the American university system for software engineers is that years are spent studying theory and little time is spent learning practical knowledge. In Vietnamese universities and training centers, practical knowledge of the most currently in-demand technology brands such as Microsoft .NET or PHP are taught. However, there is still a gap between what is learned in school and what global industry best practices are now being used. Students learn how to build web sites using PHP, but they don't realize that even a PHP-based website nowadays isn't just hand-coded in straight PHP.

English!

Another massive failing of the education system is in foreign language. The largest market for offshore development shops looking for customers, especially well-paying ones, is the English-language market. Furthermore, nearly all software technology comes from the US, and even if not then the developers still use English to write all their documentation (nginx might be a notable exception). All programming languages use English keywords. Generally, programming books, which cost up to $100 in the US, can be pirated online as ebooks, or copied at local photocopy shops, which is a normal practice for distributing textbooks in Vietnam. But the number of texts in Vietnamese will always be far less than those in English, and nevertheless be behind the curve. So English language competency is key for any developer who wants to pick up basic skills on their own, and then do further research on blogs, reference sites, and community-edited answer sites like stackoverflow.

In English language skills, other Asian countries have an advantage. Hundreds of millions of Indians already speak English, many using it to communicate with each other. It's a similar situation in the Philippines, both countries with a large number of regionally popular local languages where English is a main lingua franca. In Malaysia, like India a former British colony, English is a commonly used tongue which receives support from both the government and business communities.

So the Vietnamese outsourcing industry has a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to language. Despite English language centers booming in the country, where increasingly affluent families are able to afford relatively expensive instruction from substandard schools, most Vietnamese students are only able to obtain competency in English through persistent self-learning. Distribution of English language publications is restricted and English-language television, which could easily benefit tens of millions of young people, is limited rather than promoted.

Without sufficient language abilities, the industry depends on a select few who have mastered the language enough to interface over written communications like email wth their foreign clients. For face to face, video, or in person communication, a great potential source lies in the overseas Viet Kieu community. Viet Kieu not only can speak English in a way that minimizes miscommunication, they understand the culture and how to find and sell to customers, especially through their existing networks. Despite government hurdles, a lot of Silicon Valley Viet Kieu have come to Vietnam to start businesses.

On the bright side, a growing sector of Vietnam's software industry is in Japanese outsourcing. Japanese companies are already here in Vietnam, primarily in manufacturing. But with a growing number of students choosing to study Japanese instead of or on top of English, Vietnam can become Japan's chosen destination for its outsourcing needs. While some Japanese companies still use English as a lingua franca within their Vietnamese operations, by making use of Nihongo possible, Vietnam can level the playing field with some of their neighboring competitors.

In the past, cheap labour was seen as the country's chief competitive advantage in making international-standard software, but that advantage is declining.

The pool of employees for the software industry is still rather small, and language skills, particularly in English and Japanese, for writing software are limited.

Viet Nam, however, still maintains a balance between expenditures and human resource skills, compared to India and China.

"But this balance could collapse if the country doesn't control inflation," Nguyen Hung Cuong, software development director at Harvey Nash, told Dau tu (Vietnam Investment Review) newspaper.

"Vietnamese-made software for the Japanese market is only 1-2 per cent of what China sells to Japan," Cuong added.

The small pool of skilled employees is another problem as no company is able to employ several hundred software programmers in a few months.

"This means that there is no chance for Vietnamese companies to process big software projects," Cuong added.

Although Viet Nam is seen as a location that can produce international software, many projects remain on paper because of these limitations that the country faces.

Meanwhile, turnover from the software processing industry in Viet Nam was US$1 billion, while total turnover for the sector was $244 billion worldwide last year. It is expected yo reach $268 billion this year.

From: VietnamNews

In the next five years Asia's economy will grow by 50 per cent, and be comparable in size to the economies of the United States and Europe. By 2030 Asian GDP will exceed that of the G7 (June 2010 IMF report 'Asia Leading the way').

Vietnam is a top destination for investment as companies seek new sources of growth beyond the BRICs. Companies are now prioritising a range of second-tier countries alongside their well-established operations in the BRIC countries. In all, 71 per cent of respondents agreed that emerging markets beyond the BRIC countries collectively offer an opportunity too big to ignore. Asked to name their top three countries for investment over the next two years, Vietnam (selected by 19 per cent) was second only to China (20 per cent), edging out India in third place (18 per cent). This is the third consecutive year that Vietnam has been selected by executives as their number one investment target outside of the BRIC countries. Brazil was chosen by 14 per cent of respondents, putting it approximately in line with Indonesia (15 per cent) and South Africa (13 per cent). Russia, hard hit by the global recession, was chosen by just 8 per cent of respondents, making it less popular than Mexico (11 per cent), and roughly on a par with Turkey (9 per cent) and Nigeria (8 per cent).

Source: UKTI