Aportia in certification talks with ESI, Tec de Monterrey

Mexican software consortium Aportia is negotiating a certification contract with the office of the European Software Institute (ESI) and the Tecnologico de Monterrey (TdM), Aportia chairman Eduardo Ramirez told BNamericas. "We are talking with the Tecnologico de Monterrey [and the ESI] to be their first client," he said, adding a deal should be struck before year-end. ESI opened its first office in Mexico on the TdM's Guadalajara campus earlier this month to provide certification and consulting services to the local software industry. The government of Jalisco state provided 2mn pesos (US$175k) to fund the Aportia certification process. Ramirez expected four to five of Aportia's 26 members to have Level 2 certification under the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) by the end of 2004, with the rest following in 2005. Aportia is Mexico's second software consortium after Empeiria, which was founded on July 3 by 11 of Mexico's largest software firms. Aportia was officially incorporated in October, and its members specialize in ERPs, web-based solutions and embedded software. According to Ramirez, the company is still in its infancy and establishing a common strategic vision and drafting a business plan would probably take up the first half of next year. "We are in a pre-operation stage where we are taking on projects as groups of [Aportia member] companies rather than Aportia," he said. The administration of President Vicente Fox has identified the software industry as one of 12 strategic sectors that will receive government assistance. Federal software development program Prosoft has forecast the software industry growing to US$5bn in sales and over 300,000 jobs by the end of 2013, compared to sales of US$500mn and 17,500 positions today.