Russia's Luxoft makes Asian entry

Luxoft, a global provider of high-end software application and product development services, made its entry into Asia on Wednesday via a new delivery center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

President and CEO Dmitry Loschinin said the Russian company, with clients such as Deutsche Bank, Boeing, IBM and UBS, hopes the Vietnamese operations will also help attract customers from the Japanese market.

"As far as [the types of] business development the new Vietnam center is going to support, our most ambitious plans have to do with building a Japanese client base," Loschinin told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview. "Having a facility in Vietnam certainly makes Luxoft a more attractive proposition to Japanese customers."

The new center will support both independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprise customers with application development and maintenance services.

The company said it plans to invest some US$500,000 and Loschinin said it aims to hire "a few hundred personnel" in the Vietnam office by the end of 2008.

"We will also use the Vietnam office as part of our distributed network of delivery centers to further enhance the range of delivery models we offer to our clients," he said.

The company has other delivery facilities across EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), North America, Central and Eastern Europe.

According to Luxoft, the addition of the Vietnam center will enable the outsourcing service provider to provide its global clientele with a mix of nearshore, offshore and onsite delivery models.

The company's clients will "benefit from Vietnam's relatively untapped skilled labor force, solid education system, high English proficiency, low attrition and competitive cost structure", Luxoft said in a statement.

Truong Gia Binh, head of the Vietnam Software Association, said in the statement: "Vietnam's economy is booming and we offer a skilled workforce, fast-growing education system, political stability and lower costs."