Mr.
ROY VARGAS, General Manager of Costa Rican
software developer company Lidersoft
and Director of Costa Rica's information
technology association, CAPROSOFT.
How would you define your Association?
CAPROSOFT was founded in 1997 and is the
association regrouping the software developers
and producers of Costa Rica. It was founded
by a group of companies interested in the
research, development and commercialization
of software in general, the main objective
being our integration to the IT industry
in general and through the it, strengthening
our role vis a vis the authorities, the
press, the foreign markets, etc. The software
industry in Costa Rica is composed of 150
companies, half of them members of CAPROSOFT.
What are your areas of activities?
More than half of our enterprises work in
the area of Internet application development,
whether in e-commerce or pure multimedia.
25% develop applications related to the
telecommunications sector and 14% of our
members specialize in the field of education.
What are, at the national level,
the multimedia areas of activity your association
has identified and is currently working
on?
Software development in the area of education,
health, electronic commerce and computer
animation.
If your Association is currently
developing business relationships with other
Associations abroad, can you specify the
reasons and the strategies?
We have established business relationships
with other organizations of software developers,
mostly in Latin America and Spain. Basically,
we see the Latin American market as the
first market to reach and we are developing
common strategies accordingly.
Is your government playing an important
role in developing the multimedia industry
in your country?
We are working with the government but are
also looking for alternatives from other
actors of the industry. February 3rd national
elections will see the arrival of a new
administration and hopefully new strategies
regarding the development of the industry.
The presidential candidates have had discussions
with CAPROSOFT board members and are aware
of our propositions. They see us as a serious
association, void of any political bias.
How is your Association responding
to the rapidly changing digital environment?
There are several key issues that are monopolizing
the attention and efforts of CAPROSOFT and
its members, the software developers, among
which, that of finding adequate and alternative
financing for software companies and that
of international quality control and standards.
We would like very soon to turn out attention
to that of multimedia development.
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