IMC Institute's Press release "Emerging Technology: Thai IT Professional Readiness Survey", 17 September 2013

1. Press Release
Checking Thailand’s readiness for AEC in 2015, IMC Institute, ATCI reveal results of its latest Survey
The results found the country’s IT industry emphasises on mobile app development most while cloud
computing fails to attract general users’ interest. The industry is facing the shortage of skilled
software developers and lack of a clear business plan.
Bangkok — 17 September 2013 — IMC Institute is joining forces with the Association of Thai ICT
Industry (ATCI) to reveal the results of its latest “Emerging Technology: Thai Professional Readiness
Survey”. The survey aims at checking the readiness of the country’s IT industry for four emerging
technologies that are vital for driving businesses to move forward to the Asean Economic Community
(AEC).
The survey results found that businesses in Thailand are focused on developing mobile application
most while cloud computing technology fails to attract the Thai users' interest. At the same time, a lot
of companies only have small numbers of software developers. The industry is facing the shortage of
skilled workers and the lack of a clear business plan for software development.
The survey’s topic is “Emerging Technology: Thai IT Professional Readiness Survey”. It aimed at
preparing professionals in IT industry for the changes in terms of software development for emerging
technology, which happens really fast. Especially for the movement of AEC which will be effective in
2015.
This survey has conducted an in-depth study in four parts. Overall, it studied the readiness of software
related professionals in departments and organisations for these interesting points. They include
software developer’s computer programming language skills, mobile application development,
software development for cloud technology and software development for emerging technology. The
survey has been conducted during June to August 2013 asking over 100 samples of companies in
Thailand.
Dr Thanachart Numnonda, Executive Director, IMC Institute, said that “The survey result revealed that
many organisations realise the importance of emerging technology because they can see it as the
marketing opportunity. But the problem is the lack of IT professionals who really understand it.
Key languages in software developing are PHP, Java and .NET
In terms of computer programming language the study found that PHP, Java and .NET are still popular
among the developers which is accounting for more than a half of the samplers. Of the total, there are
65.17% using PHP, 62.92% is for Java and 61.80% using .NET.

2. However, the findings also showed that there are only small numbers of software developers in a
company or organization. Mostly there are less than 10 developers and there are a few companies
claiming that they have more than 20 software developers in the house.
Mobile applications based on iOS and Android
In part of mobile application development, the survey results showed that the most popular platforms
are iOS and Android which have almost equally popularity among users, representing 51.69%. This
followed by Windows with a proportion of 24.72%. But the new trend is that they are starting to develop
HTML5 as a cross platform application, representing 50.56%.
Interestingly, this trend is likely to expand where the number of IT personnel focusing more on mobile
application development than any other technology is increasing. The survey also found that the most
interesting is the growth of iOS.
However, the number of software related personnel in each company or organisation is still small.
Mostly there are less than 10 personnel in one company.
Cloud computing is not so popular
Although the cloud computing is a technology that is becoming widely popular among companies and
agencies in Thailand, but a survey studying about the trends in software development on the cloud
platform found that the proportion is rather small. The platforms that agencies or companies have
skilled developers most are Google App Engine, representing only 22.47%, Microsoft Azure 19.10%,
Amazon Web Services 13.48% and Heroku 5.62% respectively.
Besides having less than 10 software developers who can develop software on cloud computing in
each organization, most of the company does not have a plan to increase the number of personnel in
the software development department, which is very little when compared to other technologies.
Considering the other emerging technologies
For the other emerging technologies that are in the interest of the Thai companies, the study found that
there are personnel in business intelligence unit most which is accounting for 58.42% followed by
Facebook Application Development 33.71%, noSQL 21.35% and Big Data 17.98% respectively.
However, most companies do not have any clear plan for this.
Regarding to the problems that have been found most in the development of emerging technology is
that the lack of skilled personnel, which is answered by 76.40% of the total respondents. This followed
by the lack of knowledge sources or training, an accounting for 49.44%, lack of budget allocation
representing 42.70%, while 31.46% of the total respondents said that the technology have been
changing too fast that they cannot follow. Some 25.84% admitted that they don’t have support from the

3. government while 16.85% of the respondents said that they cannot see any marketing opportunity in
them.
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For more information please contact:
IMC Institute
คุณชุลีรัตน์ บรรณเกียรติกุล โทร 088-192-7975
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