HYDERABAD: AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu in Hyderabad inaugurated Asia’s largest conference on software excellence and business process improvement SEPG 2003 on August 1. Hosted by QAI India with Hyderabad Software Exporters Association (Hysea) as co-organizer and supported by Government of Andhra Pradesh, the two-day conference (August1-2, 2003) has brought together experts and practitioners from industry, academia and government to share learning in the area of software process improvement.

Congratulating QAI for organizing the event and taking note of the impressive turn out of the delegates, he asked the conference to chart out the time-bound plan of action to introduce quality consciousness and awareness in the IT industry. “The plan of action should specifically identify the role that industry academic institutions and government should play. This will be a concrete achievement of the SEPG conference,” he said.

Pleased with the compound growth of 84 percent in IT over a period of seven years, Naidu said, “It is not a coincidence that the Asia SEPG conference is being held in Hyderabad.” Citing the National Geographic magazine which described Hyderabad as the emerging hitec capital of the subcontinent in its November 2002 issue to NASSCOM’s latest survey which rated Hyderabad as No. 1 ITES destination he said, “Hyderabad is already leading,” and added, “high quality manpower is available. In 1995 AP had 32 engineering colleges with 8,000 engineering graduates passing out every year. Today 225 colleges produce about 66,000 engineers.”

“The fact that out of every four IT professionals in Silicon Valley one is from India and out of every four Indian IT professionals one is from AP says it all,” said the Chief Minister in his inaugural address.

The AP Government support to quality is reflected in its ICT policy. “Reimbursing 20 percent of the costs incurred by IT companies on securing quality certification of SEI CMM level 2 and above is driving the quality movement in AP,” pointed out president of Hysea Shakti Sagar in his welcome address.

However, looking ahead, QAI ED Navyug Mohnot said, “Andhra Pradesh should aim at becoming a quality conscious government and with CEO Naidu at the helm of affairs it won’t be long before we can come out with G-CMM and AP can sure qualify to be the first.”

(CNS)