By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
November 10, 2009

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga – Appearing to be celebrating over an injury, the Philippine private sector is happy about the IT job shortages taking place around the world, seeing this as a great business opportunity.

According to Jonathan Rosenberg, CEO and chairman of Cyber City TeleServices, the world is already experiencing IT job shortages and described this as “a great opportunity!!!”

“It is expected that in the next 10 years IT jobs growth will out-surpass any other Job in the market place world wide,” he said. 

Speaking at the recent Convergence 2009 BPO-Call Center exhibit held in Fontana Hotel in Pampanga, Rosenberg reported the Philippines has not even scraped the beginning of its IT-based BPO (business process outsourcing) services growth potential – pegged as a multi-billion dollar industry with over 500,000 jobs at present.

Rosenberg said IT jobs are in constant demand growth, noting he Global BPO market is expected to reach US$259 billion, of which 28%, namely US$73 billion, is going to be outsourced.

“Cost considerations will result in increased outsourcing thus offshore outsourcing will offer additional cost saving opportunities,” he noted.

The BPO executive shared the Top 10 opportunities published worldwide in the IT sector on a global basis where dramatic shortages are expected world wide, and they are: machine learning, mobilizing applications, wireless networking, human-computer interface, project management, general networking skills, network convergence technicians, open-source programming, business intelligence systems, and embedded security.

However, on the BPO space, Rosenberg cited an IBM survey wherein the Philippines scored in the Top 4 worldwide with India and China. The said survey was testing a list of ingredients including language skills, telecommunication, flexibility, local potential for recruitment of manpower, general business environment, infrastructure, among others.

“The recent world economic recession is not an obstacle but rather a differentiating opportunity, delivering quality services at efficient prices with high quality IT personnel, thus differentiating our selves from other competition elements around the globe whereby the Philippines sector continues to be known as the center stage for high quality platform,” Rosenberg noted.

Yet the local private sector, Rosenberg said, realizes that the road to success for the nation does not only depend on the highway infrastructure and the telecom infrastructure, but more importantly on its education infrastructure.

“The investment in our young students is an investment that has an immediate measurable return to the Philippines economy as evidenced by our macro economic results in the past years,” he said. “We therefore look forward for the continued funding of the education infrastructure of the nation.”

Rosenberg added with global competition at hand, the private sector shall continue to fuel the IT and BPO sector growth together with government and the local government units (LGUs). “We do not plan to miss this continued opportunity.”

Among the priority plans of the private sector, he said, is to strengthen further the high quality English language of Filipinos at the early education stages.

Convergence 2009 is an ICT road show initiative led by the government’s Commission on ICT (CICT) supported by the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P) and the Coordinating Council Of Private Education Associations (COCOPEA).

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