Hangzhou: Not Just a Pretty Face
February 4th, 2008 | by This is China! |Hangzhou is shaping up quickly to become the sort of IT/BPO hub that would make Central Government proud. ChinaTechNews.com had an article last week that:
The Symbio Group, a provider of outsourced software development, testing, globalization and support services out of China, has signed agreements with China’s Hangzhou Municipal Government to establish a new software park in Hangzhou.
The Sybio Group’s schedule for implementing the plan is aggressive:
The Symbio East Software Park will be the first outsourcing center in Hangzhou and plans are to employ more than 1,500 people in its first phase of operations. Scheduled to open in spring 2008, the Symbio software park in Hangzhou will house software teams responsible for business process outsourcing, financial services software development, and research and development.
The development follows on the heels of Intel’s entry into Hangzhou in October 2007 to support Zhejiang-based software developers. According to a ThomasNet article:
The Intel Zhejiang Software Technology Innovation Support Center is expected to become one of the largest software development, testing and validation centers in Asia with one of the region’s most advanced high-performance computer centers for visual rendering.
Zhejiang province in particular is a hotbed for software development with its 36 universities that annually pump out 10,000 software engineers a year. However, as is well-known about the Chinese education system in general, the graduates are strong on theory, weak on application:
The innovation support center will offer the latest Intel hardware and software technologies, and share worldwide best-known-methods for software optimization, testing and validation to help local software vendors innovate around Intel processor technologies.
Companies like Intel, Microsoft and Redhat are coming to China with greater ambitions than merely selling product to a fast-growing marketplace; they are vying just as much as the Communist Party itself for the hearts and minds of China’s rising IT professional class.
Bill Dodson
SUZHOU, China
Related reading in the This is China! BLOG:
Resistance is Futile in Chengdu
China Investment: How to Know When You’re Not Wanted
Life is Gooood in Hangzhou
