Korea's software industry to emerge as a global player As the Korean government shifts the IT industry's axis from IT powerhouse to SW (software) powerhouse from 2006, the importance of the SW industry as a core IT industry is rapidly gathering strength. Korea's SW industry is the fastest developing industry among all the IT industries and it is also an industry which boosts other industries' productivity and efficiency. As a next-generation growth engine, SW is the core of the IT industry, which enhances the value of a product by being embedded in all sorts of IT products, and is a core infrastructure that decides global competitiveness in a knowledgebased economy. In the light of this growing importance of the SW industry, H.K.Choi, chairman of the Korea Software Industry Association (KOSA http://www.sw.or.kr) and CEO of the Daou Tech Inc., elaborated on the relative importance of SW in an interview with The Korea IT Times: "The growth rate of the top 10 HW enterprises in the world is no more than 1 percent whereas the growth rate of the 10 superior position SW enterprises is 6 percent according to OECD in 2004. Moreover, in comparison with 1999, the production scale and employees of the domestic SW industry in 2004 have increased over three times, 13.8 times in the case of amount of exports, and over 2.5 times in terms of engaging company number." The chairman further underscores the importance of nurturing the SW industry, adding that SW is a high value-added industry by comparison with manufacturing or service industry in world market. In terms of value-added by industries too, in reality service and manufacturing are no more than 50.1 percent and 27.4 percent whereas SW is posting 60.7 percent according to KISDI. Choi notes that MS's average profit rate over recent five years ('99~'03) remains three-times with 47.6 percent in comparison to Samsung Electronics' 15.6 percent. Accordingly, Korea's SW industry can substitute the existing industries such as manufacturing whose difficulty is anticipated owing to the emergence of powerful competing countries such as India and China and is a core strategic industry for Korea lacking natural resources and human resources are ample, to be able to achieve new job creation and continuous economic growth, Choi said. "SW industry's first leap ahead year" As is generally known, the government has proclaimed the year 2005 as "SW industry's first leap ahead year" and President Roh Moo-hyun has pledged to convert from "IT code" to "SW code" when addressing SW employees in "The SW Industry Development Strategy Report Meeting" held last month at COEX, Seoul. Concerning the government's nurturing will for SW industry, Choi assesses that the government also is showing SW industry nurturing will conspicuously as the importance of the SW industry emerged in 2005. In reality, several attempts at nurturing the SW industry were attained as the government supported domestic SW obligatory purchases by public organizations and smaller SW special councils by proclaiming the year 2005 as "SW industry's first leap ahead year". In MIC's "SW Industry Development Strategy Report Meeting" held recently, the ministry has committed to nurture SW along with a slogan, "From IT powerhouse to SW powerhouse" by addressing five core policy directions such as IT service enterprise's specialization as well as becoming larger, SW field's high-grade manpower nurturing, package SW leading company nurturing, digital content firstrate company nurturing, and SW cluster construction. Chairman Choi stressed that the Association has prepared a framework for the SW industry to be able to emerge rapidly as a core of the next-generation national IT strategy as the government decided to move to "Post IT839" policy by altering IPv6 with software in IT839's software infrastructure from 2006. This is of course the result of efforts that as SW meanwhile has been excluded from the "IT839" policy, the government's IT policy, business circle's concern was high, but the Association supports the importance of SW and proposed this to the competent ministries, he commented. Conversion "from IT code to SW code" As for the Association's priority projects in 2006, the chairman added that KOSA will drive forward priority projects such as selling SW at a fixed price, global marketing support, business price as well as system improvement about the unit cost of wages, the Association's phase strengthening as a hub association of the SW industry and reinforcing customer service. In conjunction with the SW industry circle's profitability improvement and all sorts of irrational system improvements as well, Choi explains that the Association is progressing with improvements. In regard to overseas exhibition support as well as overseas market pioneering, Choi said that KOSA is planning to support differentiated exhibitions' participation for the SW field so that the Association may give substantial help to member companies even though it reduces the number of exhibitions to take part in. In particular, in the event of large-sized exhibition such as CEBIT in Germany, KOSA is planning to operate, laying emphasis on pre-marketing for the purpose of 1 to 1 business meeting of participating companies by composing thoroughly SWoriented Korean pavilion. Pointing out that SW industry smaller companies holding a large majority, is fragile relatively in terms of funds as well as human power part in comparison with another industry groups, chairman Choi reveals the Association's plan that it will carry out a role for consulting support by fields in the interests of member company's SW export and as SW export commercial house. He asserts that the conversion "from IT code to SW code" can't be realized without through ultimately SW export industrialization. Develop collaboration success model! For the collaboration development scheme of domestic SW industry, Choi proposes that relevant SW industry circle exert themselves so that it can settle as a groundwork infra equipped with competitiveness by preparing close cooperation system in technology development between the government and an educational-industrial-laboratorial complex as well as SW superior manpower nurturing field. Second, he points out that for the sake of balanced growth of domestic SW industry, global competitiveness boost, and fair competition market's enlargement, Captive Market large group companies hold has to be opened externally for transparent transaction and to improve fair competition constitution. Third, with "the SW Industry Development Collaborative Proclamation Rally" as an impetus, it is necessary to carry out common research and practice tasks, the chairman explained, adding that the coexistence collaboration's success model has to serve as a momentum for the domestic SW industry to be able to advance into global markets. Fourthly, he proposes that the government add its support, recognizing SW as national infrastructure and the private sector also has to solve chronic and fundamental obstacles such as unfair transaction behavior between large companies and smaller companies and so forth. Last but not least, Choi emphasizes that the establishment of "SW Promotion Department" over at the least "bureau" is necessary since there are boundaries for current MIC SW Promotion Team's "Team" unit office organization to propel SW industry-associated law system improvement, technology/human power's infra construction, new growth engine project's core support and so forth. He concluded his interview by stressing that to attain SW powerhouse, this should be accompanied by all means.