Organised by Bangladesh Association for Software and Information and Services (Basis), the aim of 'SoftExpo 2007' is to create awareness among the general people and encourage them to use software for mission critical applications and businesses. Choosing the right software is a challenging issue and in this regard SoftExpo has been helping us to make that crucial decision. Tapan Chowdhury, adviser, Ministry of Science and ICT formally inaugurated the event.

The exhibition has been divided into several zones, namely Business Software, Multimedia & Animation, ISP & Data Communication, IT Education, High-End Hardware Solution, Outsourcing and SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) software zone with the participation of 130 IT companies.

Bringing prominent software companies under the same roof to exhibit their innovations has always been one of the main objectives of SoftExpo.

'Turning our People into Resource' is this year's theme of SoftExpo. At present it is possible to empower our people by giving them proper access to ICT and earn foreign currencies by exporting skilled manpower to foreign countries. Consequently, multinational companies can outsource their work to local companies. In both cases our economy will be benefited. SoftExpo can help us achieve these goals.

Rubaiyat Jamil, CEO, ICE Technologies & Services Ltd. told StarTech that at SoftExpo his company is exhibiting products and services such as the ICE lease multiplier, IFS ERP application, IFS CRM application, CBOSS combergent billing application, Avabill postpaid billing application etc. "In near future, when VOIP will become a common facility it will create a potential demand for VOIP billing software and we are waiting to grab this opportunity," he added.

Synesis IT, a comparatively new IT firm that provides technological solution and management consultation are exhibiting their Hospital Management Suite and Business Management Suite. Shahriar Shahid Tomal, manager, business development told StarTech that, they have already acquired gold partner status from Microsoft. He also mentioned that, they have also developed a portal RehabHousing.com that provides information to customers regarding apartment purchase.

Zanala Bangladesh is exhibiting their touch screen based information terminal 'info Centre' at the fair. This device with a touch screen provides information on products and services. This device enables customers to serve themselves instead of waiting in line.

Visual Magic Corporation Limited is showcasing their E-scanner at the fair. The E-scanner is a proprietary device that uses to capture images from printed materials with Dot Pattern. E-scanner uses infrared emitting LED and an IR filter. The emitted infrared is reflected by background graphics printed with non-carbon CMYK ink, but absorbed by the carbon dots. IR filter lens only the reflected infrared ray to pass and thus a dot-only image is captured by the E-scanner. In addition, Visual Magic Corporation Limited also introduced technology to detect fake 500 Taka note and smart voting system.

IBCS-PRIMAX Software (Bangladesh) Ltd. the first Oracle Corporation business partner in the country provides Oracle solution for different organisations and multinational companies. This fair they exhibiting Oracle Collaboration Suite, Discoverer Reporting Tools, DW, BI and EBS.

ERP solution provider CSL Software Resources Ltd. came up with several ERP software namely Kandaree for garments industries, Kormee for human resource management, Shoilee for real estate and Dheeraj for financial management solution. CSL commonly targets garments industries, pharmaceutical companies, MNC, government organisations and real estate companies.

JobStreet.com Bangladesh, a wing of JobStreet.com, one of Asia's leading online recruitment company are exhibiting some of their new features such as resume management system and my JobStreet services. JobStreet.com has an established regional presence in Malaysia, Singapore, India, Philippines and Indonesia.

Development Research Network (D.Net) is displaying their digital publications at the fair. D.Net is a non-profit organisation and currently working to developing knowledge based community in the country. They have established telecentres in many districts; developed a research portal bdresearch.org and recently tied up with Microsoft for their 'CLICK' program.

Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) is another participant of SoftExpo 2007. BdOSN is a non-profit, voluntary organisation that promotes open source trend in Bangladesh. BdOSN inspires the world's Bangla language community to develop the biggest Bangla Website of the world, Bangla Wikipedia (http://bn.wikipedia.org) through its initiative popularly known as Bangla Wiki.

Apart from business and non profit organisations different universities including American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB), North South University (NSU), Daffodil International University (DIU), East West University (EWU) and training institutes such as Daffodil Institute of IT (DIIT), Institute of Call center Technologies (ICCT), New Horizon CLC of Dhaka also participating at SoftExpo 2007.

BASIS SoftExpo 2007 also encompasses several seminars & roundtables, IT innovation search program 'Abiskarer Khoje' and Best IT User Award.

This year one of the leading telecom operators in the country, AKTEL is the main sponsor of the fair while Windows Vista and Business Promotion Council (BPC), Ministry of Commerce are co-sponsors and Channel-i, The Daily Star and Radio Today are the media partners and Dekko Airnet Ltd. is the official ISP of this event.

Since Bangladesh has been born as an independent country we are striving lot to secure our position as a progressive nation in the global context. But day-by-day we are facing stiff resistance from our competitors and nowadays it is not possible to ensure sustainable development without Information and Communication Technology (ICT). As a result, we urgently require more advance ICT skilled manpower and in the same time develop state-of-the-art ICT infrastructure to face the challenges of this hi-tech age.

As a developing country Bangladesh has certain limitations to shine in all segments of ICT. For instance, in the sort run due to lack of infrastructure and expertise it is not possible to setup hardware manufacturing plants in Bangladesh. But it is possible to make substantial progress in software development utilising our young talents. So at this moment software development is the one of the main areas exhibit our strength and creativity.

At this moment Bangladesh needs an ICT driven economy. To do this we need to eliminate our internal disturbances and conquer all limitations that hinder our endeavor to become a tech update nation. Moreover, we have huge human resource and we can easily turn them into assets by taking proper incentives.