CAIRO: The Software Engineering Competence Center (SECC) signed a cooperation agreement with the European Software Institute ESI-Tecnalia to exchange the latest software development technologies, according to a statement from the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (MCIT). ESI-Tecnalia - a private technological center and a non-profit foundation created in 1993 by the European Commission with the support of the Basque Government - will establish a unit at the SECC specialized in exchanging the latest IT technologies and services. Based on the agreement, the center offers IT services in cooperation with the ESI-Tecnalia and its units worldwide. The cooperation also opens communication channels for SECC with the institute's clients worldwide. SECC was established by the IT Ministry in June 2001, and is also an affiliate of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA). It aims to boost the software industry in Egypt by improving software engineering practices to achieve a strong presence in the global market. The primary fields of cooperation include information security, integrated software development, international quality criteria and IT services. "The newly-founded unit will be linked to the ESI network units across the globe in Australia, the US, China, Spain, Bulgaria, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, said Gamal Mohamed Ali, SECC chairman. The main target of the agreement is to benefit from the world's latest technologies to help develop the Egyptian IT industry's competitiveness in the international market, he added. To speed up the implementation process, SECC experts visited the ESI headquarters to take part in the international conference held there and put into action the cooperation agreement and agree on the executive steps of its first phase. The ESI conference discussed the countries' different experiences in software development projects and IT services. SECC has also been very active in the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) domain - a field the MCIT is keen on boosting - by promoting the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) in a seminar held in Saudi Arabia this month. The seminar came as part of the cooperation agreement that SECC signed in 2007 with Saudi ARCOM to market its services in the Kingdom. The seminar presented to companies and business owners, the CMMI mechanism and how to apply it, its benefits and the entities that are likely to acquire it. CMMI is a process improvement approach that provides organizations with the essential elements of effective processes. It can be used to guide process improvement across a project, division, or an entire organization. Last year, 23 Egyptian software programming companies were awarded the CMMI and this year 10 Egyptian companies should acquire it in the first quarter of 2008. The center is the US Software Engineering Institute (SEI)'s first partner in the Middle East, which awards CMMI and offers evaluation services worldwide, Ali said.
