Singapore software developer Logiciel Systems Ltd is setting up four subsidiaries, starting with a Farnham, Surrey office in the UK, followed by Frankfurt, Germany, Paris, France and Calgary in Canada. Logiciel offers a contract software development service from a cheap greenfield site in the People’s Republic of China. It was founded in 1991, but grew out of Information Engineering Services Pte Ltd, a 15-year old firm with 150 staff. Managing director Lim Koon Sang said this created too many overheads, hence the change in business model. He entered into partnership with Chinese industrial conglomerate Jianbei Enterprises, which provided the backing to set up Logiciel in the enterprise zone of Qingyan, Guangdong, in China. Lim Koon Sang said there was no worry of Jianbei forcing unwanted political policy on Logiciel: They are as capitalistic as us! There are now 20 management staff in Singapore, and 128 programmers in China. They will work on both desktop and mid-range environments, including Unix, MS-DOS, and Microsoft Corp’s Windows, and with database management systems from Oracle Corp, Informix Software Inc and Ingres Corp. The subsidiaries expect to be sub-contracted by software houses or their consultants, and at this stage offer only manufacture and after-sale support, rather than design too. The Calgary office will open on the back of a contract with local firm Pro-C Ltd, worth around $5m over the next three years, to develop the next version of Pro-C’s application development tool.
