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Dalian Special: Green and sustainable: the new software industry standard

By Han Tianyang (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-17 07:35

Booth of the Dalian Software Park at the ongoing China International Software & Information Service Fair, in Dalian. Photos by Zhang Xiaomin / China Daily

Information services and related software grew considerably in China last year to become its fastest growing industry, and contributing a great deal to economic development.

Revenues reached 1 trillion yuan in 2010, a year-on-year 20-percent increase. But, what is even more noteworthy perhaps, is the sector's energy-saving potential.

This and other matters are being addressed now at the China International Software & Information Service Fair, in Dalian, Liaoning province, where the focus is on "green IT" and "smart applications".

This year's fair has at least 800 exhibitors in the 30,000-square-meter space, making it the biggest in its nine-year history.

The organizers have said they want this fair to do something to make the software industry a clean Industry, while it powers the global economy.

Experts have said that "green" and sustainable will be the new software industry standard, in the same way that it has been applied to the global economy.

They said software requires less energy and produces less pollution than traditional industries such as heavy manufacturing.

One example of how this works came from Gao Wei, president of the Dalian Software Park. A 10,000-sq-m part of his park, he said, has 1,000 engineers and pays 300 million yuan in taxes. That is five times the amount paid by traditional industries occupying the same amount of space. And, power consumption amounts to only one-fifth of what manufacturing requires.

The "smart applications", a theme of the fair, means making the software industry more energy-efficient.

Outside this industry, use of materials and the cost of logistics have been cut significantly as companies gradually apply smarter systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning and Supply Chain Management. This in turn improves efficiency and cuts waste, explained Wang Wenjing, president of Ufsoft, one of the country's largest software makers.

And when we add new technologies such as cloud computing, the mobile Internet, and the Internet of things, according to some experts, it might be called "an intelligent revolution".

Against this backdrop, the green economy and smart/intelligent applications will be the next engine for growth in the software industry. And they will play a crucial role in increasing China's competitiveness and ability to innovate.

 

(China Daily 06/17/2011 page15)