The 50 leading Vietnamese IT companies reportedly earned revenues of VND28 trillion (US$1.2 billion) last year, accounting for 35 per cent of the sales reported by the software and digital content industry. -Photo pcworld.com.vn

They employed over 30,500 programmers and engineers, or 19 per cent of the human resources in the industry, and many of them achieved growth of 30 - 40 per cent last year.

Of them, 20 are in business process outsourcing (BPO) and IT outsourcing (ITO), 26 are in software, IT solutions and services, and the remaining four are in digital content and mobile solutions and applications.

The information was announced by the Viet Nam Software Association (VINASA) under a programme called "Top 50 Vietnamese information technology enterprises."

"These are enterprises that meet the highest criteria in technology, quality, management, market and customers, turnover, and human resources," Nguyen Thi Thu Giang, general secretary of VINASA was quoted as saying in the Thời báo Kinh tế Viet Nam (Việt Nam Economic Times).

The three-year-old programme aims to provide information about leading Vietnamese IT enterprises to potential international partners and customers around the world.

"This is an official channel to provide authentic information about the activities of Vietnamese companies to those who want to partner [with them]," Nguyen Hung Cuong, director of Harvey Nash Viet Nam, said.

This year, for the first time, the top 50 IT enterprises will be introduced in a publication to be done in three languages, Vietnamese, English and Japanese.

It will appear in all of VINASA's marketing and promotional campaigns in the US, Japan, the Asia – Pacific and Europe.

Viet Nam is consistently among the top 10 IT outsourcing countries in the Asia – Pacific region, according to Gartner.

With low cost and political stability being its two strong points, the country has become Japan's second largest IT partner.

According to a 2016 A.T Keaney report, in outsourcing services, Viet Nam ranks 11th out of a total of 55 countries globally and fifth in Southeast Asia.

In Tholons's 100 most attractive cities for outsourcing, Ha Noi and HCM City are in 19th and 18th positions.

Viet Nam topped Cushman & Wakefield's Global Outsourcing Location Index for the first time last year and attracts investments from many giant technology companies like Intel, Samsung, LG, and Microsoft.