UpperLink Limited, indigenous software Development Company, says it is on the verge of acquiring a new industry certification that would strengthen customer confidence by boosting the efficiencies and processes of the firm. The Capability Maturity Modeling Certification (CMMI), according to the company, would also put UpperLink in pole position to compete in the global business landscape, but also help to achieve the software firm’s strategic targets of developing a core banking software for the country’s highly competitive financial services industry. CMMI is a process improvement training and appraisal program and service administered and marketed by Carnegie Mellon University and required by many DOD and U.S. Government contracts, especially software development. Speaking with BusinessDay in an interview, Segun Akano, managing director, UpperLink Limited, said, “We are in the process of getting certified. CMMI is a certification for software developers who do design and service. Our company is going into design because we write codes from scratch. We have our e-hospital solutions, we have done college portals”. These software solutions, according to Akano, needs to be standardised to meet the demands and expectations of the global market. Omobola Johnson, minister of communications technology, had at a recent industry forum, said indigenous software development companies lacked measurability and consistency in their operations. “In the next one year, we would be CMMI certified. Once we achieve this, customers can be rest assured that the company is not a one man show”, he further added.
Considering that government is looking to diversify the economy from oil, the UpperLink MD said software development, if properly retooled and supported, could become a significant contributor to the nations’ GDP (Gross Domestic Product). The local software industry is potentially a $6 billion business, but widespread skepticism about the competence of indigenous software developers has stalled the development of the market. Akano however said that it would take some time to change such negative perception, but added that local software firms are gradually building competencies in development of locally relevant solutions. He however advised government to create the much needed enabling environment for local software developers to thrive. “We are not asking them to give us money. All we want is for the federal government to create a conducive environment that would allow us grow into big, successful companies”, he stated. According to him, the Chinese government closed its doors to United States’ (US) technology firm, Google, in order to allow its local search engine Bidu grow. “China allowed Bidu garner experience, competence, and scale by shutting out Google Incorporated. We only hope our leaders one way or the other begins to think in such direction”, he further added. The online business landscape, according to Akano, holds immense opportunities for wealth creation.
But, he lamented the slow adoption of the .ng domain name. According to him, “We started late in the .ng domain name adoption. At the time many banks and large corporate began to develop websites, we did not have our .ng domain name. They had .com. By the time .ng domain name was finally introduced, these companies had already made considerable investments in .com.
