Cebu academe builds up pool of digital imaging developers

CEBU, Philippines - In its bid to complement the growing interest of the world’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry to Cebu, the academe is trying to develop another area of skill expertise in software development through digital imaging.

Gregg Gabison, board member of Cebu Educational Development for Information Technology Inc. (Cedfit) said that Cebu is starting to provide a good pool of digital imaging developers to accommodate the growing demand for this kind of skill.

Digital Imaging, also called as digital photographic imaging technology, is a method of image editing in which a picture is scanned from an original document to digital information in the form of pixels that can be read and manipulated by a computer, and subsequently reformed as a visible image.

Gabison, who is also the dean for College of Computer and Communication Technology at the University of San Jose-Recoletos said that this component of software development is getting more popular now, and Cebu should provide this kind of skill immediately.

“We’d like to develop more application in software development, putting more technology to digital imaging,” he said in an interview.

This is the active start of Cebu to go into a more high value research and development (R&D) destination, providing BPO and software development companies in the world high quality of manpower skills in this particular field.

He said with the entry of more Multi-National Companies (MNCs) in Cebu, setting up back-office facilities, including R&D, providing good pool of application development manpower is a crucial component.

Thus, the academe sector is also preparing for the influx of software development companies that are interested to set up sites in Cebu, not only because of the in place infrastructure and friendlier business environment, but more importantly for the abundant supply of software developers.

As of now though, of the total three thousand fresh graduate software developers taking up BS IT courses, only 40 percent is hired to practice their expertise, the rest are still trying other jobs like call center and other technical works.

In time, Gabison said Cebu will be one of the preferred sites for software development companies, especially if it has to achieve the level providing top notch software developers in the world.

If this bid will be realized, software developers or engineers do not need to go to other countries looking for greener pastures, as foreign companies will have to set up their facilities here.

Job vacancies in broad Information Technology (IT) and IT-enabled services in Cebu are expected to reach 15,000 by 2009, this includes huge need for software developers and IT engineers.     

The BPO industry which is part of the broad ICT sector is considered as one of the sunshine industries in the Philippines. As of 2007, the industry employed around 300,000 workers and generated $4.9-billion revenue.

By 2010, the industry hopes to provide a million jobs and to generate US$13 billion revenues, or a 10 percent share of the global market.