As Vietnam moves from low-tech manufacturing to a service-oriented economy, the country’s information technology (IT) market is increasingly gaining traction, giving competition to IT firms in China and India. This has partly been encouraged by the growth of Vietnam as a regional market for domestic enterprises and global technology vendors.

Why you should work with Vietnamese IT companies

Local software producers mostly provide their products to government and small and medium-sized enterprises, while larger Vietnamese companies generally look to multinationals for software. As internet infrastructure starts to improve, more demand for areas such as software as a service (or, on-demand software) and other cloud-computing services should pick up. 

What you should pay attention to when working with Vietnamese IT companies

The underdeveloped IT sector and infrastructure, as well as a relatively low level of education in IT, make Vietnamese companies less attractive to foreign customers. Additionally, IT companies and web agencies from Vietnam face systemic problems with cybersecurity, piracy rate and efficient communication among others.  

Cybersecurity is a particular vulnerability for Vietnam, and one of the most notable cases happened in 2016, when an alleged Chinese hacker group, 137CN, carrying out a number of cyberattacks on Vietnam’s airports as well as the official website of the national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines in which the airline’s customer database was stolen and made public on the internet.

In 2019 there were a total of 31,500 security incidents in the country, according to the Vietnam Computer Emergency Response Team. In the first half of 2020 alone the number of incidents was 4.4 times higher compared with a year earlier. 

How reliable are Vietnam based IT companies 

Under the strongly growing digital economy, major opportunities are opening for investors, especially those who want to provide products and services based on new technologies. Combining this and the cheap market price, Investors rely on Vietnamese IT companies to provide the needed digital services. 

But the situation is different in the regional market, where potential clients have a wide range of countries and companies were to choose from for their web or software projects. 

How does the Vietnamese IT industry relate to the neighboring countries

IT outsourcing services generate around $3bn a year, according to Vinasa. However, Vietnam is still a boutique market when it comes to outsourcing and lags behind its regional peers such as India and the Philippines, which earned $98bn and $21.3bn, respectively, from providing IT services.