>>> Sao Khue Awards honour outstanding IT products and services
On April 24, the Vietnam Software and IT Services Association (VINASA) held an awards ceremony to announce the winners of the 2021 Sao Khue Awards.
This year the event has set a "record" with nearly 300 nominations from 161 enterprises, an increase of 57.8% compared to the last year’s season. This is the largest in terms of the number of nominations and registered businesses since the event was born.
Through the three rounds, the jury selected 180 excellent IT platforms, services and solutions to award the Sao Khue in 2021, including 25 platforms, 32 services and 123 solutions.
The highlight of 2021 Sao Khue Awards is the new category Digital Transformation Platform with 46 registered for the award, belonging to three development models – Platform for Developers (market place), Core Technology Platform and Software Service Platform (SaaS).
As with every year, the Top 10 – the most prestigious category of the Sao Khue Awards – was the focus of attention. According to statistics, nine businesses in the Top 10 had a total revenue of VND367.4 trillion (US$16 billion) in 2020 and created jobs for 63,453 employees. In addition to their excellent technology, methodical investment, and clear business development strategy, most of the Top 10 in the 2021 Sao Khue Awards were highly praised in the creation of new services and value for customers and the society.
Held annually since its inception in 2003, after 17 years, 1,089 outstanding Sao Khue Awards and titles have been honoured. Along with communication and connection activities, the Sao Khue Awards has become an effective launch pad for Vietnamese IT brands, contributing to strongly promoting strategic policies for the development of the IT industry in particular and the Vietnamese economy in general.
Capturing the industry development trend in Vietnam and around the world, as well as realising the national digital transformation strategy, in its 18th season, the Sao Khue Awards set out the message of promoting digital solutions platforms and pioneering the development of digital ecosystems.
This is an important change to encourage pioneering IT businesses to invest in developing digital platforms in combination with those providing digital services and solutions to quickly create digital ecosystems for Vietnam, especially in key industries that prioritise digital transformation.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Phan Tam assessed that the Sao Khue Awards are the pride of Vietnam's ICT industry and also an effective tool and important driving force in national digital transformation.
He called on the entire Vietnamese technology community in general and businesses whose products and services to be honoured in particular to continue to make more efforts to create excellent digital services and solutions for the Vietnamese market and carry out digital transformation to make digital technology a new driving force for the country's socio-economic development.
Truong Gia Binh, Chairman of the VINASA Founding Council cum Head of the Organising Committee of the 2021 Sao Khue Awards, said that after 18 years, the IT industry has become the largest technology industry in Vietnam with revenue accounting for about 14% of the country's GDP. In this success, there has been contribution from the Sao Khue Awards.
Binh stated that the products and services participating in Sao Khue this year all have innovations in product development, most of which have been raised to a new level with new technologies such as AI, Cloud, Big Data, IoT and Blockchain. In particular, many products and services have been on the right trend and achieved high revenue growth at hundreds or even thousands of percentage points in 2020, making them bright spots in the digital economy and contributing to Vietnam's impressive growth performance in the past year, respected by the world.
