Special Supplement: Software park, companies grow together

This is a message from Professor Hu Hongliang (right), director and general manager of Shanghai Pudong Software Park.

This month, many distinguished guests and friends are gathering for Summer Davos in Dalian, a port city on the Bohai Sea. I would like to extend my warm wishes for the success of the meeting.

Shanghai Pudong Software Park is a national software industry base and outsourcing base.

Forward thinking and careful planning and operation has helped us to establish a first-class working, research and development environment in the park.

A legion of local and international software and IT outsourcing companies are involved in the park, drawn by its technology, human resources, marketing and commercial services, as well as supporting policies from the central and local governments.

These companies have boosted the park's business scale and innovation, helping it to achieve its target of rapid development.

Shanghai Pudong Software Park now covers a floor space of 120,000sqm. Its first and second phases were completed in March 2000 and September 2002.

By the end of last year, 960 companies had registered in the park and 196 software companies had set up offices there. Together, they employ a total of 12,000 people.

Within the park, a number of company clusters have been formed in sectors such as chip design, information security, software exports, financial software, telecom and pharmaceuticals.

The software park is also home to a group of well-known software firms including Sony Shanghai Technology Center, Kyocera Corp and DENSO Corp from Japan; Citi Corp Software and Technology Services (Shanghai) Ltd, Bearing Point, Agilent Technologies, Synopsys, Cadence, Augmentum Inc and SunGard Kingstar from the United States; TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Satyam from India; SAP Labs China and Shanghai Inta Information Technology Co Ltd from Germany; and local firms China UnionPay, Isvision Technologies Co Ltd, Primeton Technologies Ltd.

The outsourcing sector in the park has developed rapidly. Eight companies in the park were ranked among the top 100 global outsourcing companies by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals.

In 2006, companies in the park posted revenue of 10.4 billion yuan and software exports totaled $150 million. Per-unit output topped that of all software parks in the country.

Construction of the third phase of the park began in 2004, with a planned area of 580,000sqmand a total investment of around 3 billion yuan. It is scheduled for completion by 2010.

The software park is expected to fulfill its target of 25 billion yuan in business revenue and an export volume of $600 million a year by 2010.

Construction of the park's Kunshan area began last year, with a floor space of 440,000sqm and an investment of 1.6 billion yuan. It is scheduled for completion by 2010.

Shanghai Pudong Software Park is becoming a distribution center of software products, technology and telant on the west coast of the Pacific. It is an area which appeals to software firms. It is also an area which helps software firms grow faster. Software firms from home and abroad are welcome to develop in Shanghai Pudong Software Park.

(China Daily 09/05/2007 page6)