The high rate of technology adoption in Vietnam presents vast opportunities for growth, according to Le Hong Minh, co-founder, chairman and CEO of technology company VNG Corporation.

In the field of mobile payments, for example, Minh said that by demand alone, “five years from now, Vietnam could have 40 million transactions per year, 40 times the current capacity of the banking system”.

However, "Vietnam still faces challenges to fully exploit this opportunity," he said at the Vietnam Internet Ecosystem Forum held in Singapore on April 13.

“Vietnam lacks people who really understand and are fully committed to this tremendous change,” Minh said. As a result, businesses still lag behind consumers in technology adoption.

Minh said that to bridge this gap in human resources, one of VNG’s goals is “to excite talented people to work in the technology industry in Vietnam, in whatever capacity they can.”

Based on his extensive research of Vietnam’s macro-economic development, Dr. Vu Minh Khuong of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore expressed optimism about Vietnam’s economic performance, but stressed the importance of strategic reform and digital transformation to sustain that growth, especially in the current global economic climate.

“Information and communications technology (ICT) adoption will affect all internal and external factors influencing the growth of the market,” Khuong said.

Vu Minh Tri, vice president of VNG Cloud Services, and managing director of VINADATA, noted that cloud computing had tremendous potential.

“The current trend is to have inter-connected facilities, opening up huge opportunities for IT companies to tap into the budget for infrastructure development, which normally makes up 60 per cent of a country’s GDP,” he said.

A panel discussion on the cloud computing sub-sector in Vietnam also pointed out that gaps which exist across multiple verticals, from retail to government, could be filled by cloud computing solutions.

Alex Smith, the APAC technical lead for Microsoft Azure, expressed confidence in the ability of the “public cloud to remove barriers of entry for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), hence democratising the market”.

Partnering is also an excellent way to transfer knowledge and expedite progress.

“The problems (regarding cloud computing services) that they solve in Vietnam are fundamentally simple. Hence, with the right stewards with enough experience, progress will be seen much more quickly”, said Wilbur Le, vice president of corporate development at LEAP, an investor in cloud computing companies.

VNG, in joint efforts with Hanh Trinh Viet, a community organisation that connects overseas Vietnamese experts with Vietnamese companies to find solutions to challenges of common interest, aims to provide a sustainable channel for communication and collaboration with IT communities abroad, to connect with more Vietnamese talent and to inform them of the opportunities and challenges at home.

The forum also highlighted opportunities for overseas professionals to take part in Vietnam’s exciting market.

The forum featured leading organisations in Southeast Asia like the National University of Singapore, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, ST Telemedia, SEA, Kyber Network and VNG Corporation.

The event attracted over 120 participants from various industries and backgrounds, generating passionate participation from the audience.