By Paneetha Ameresekere
A Korean software company, said to be the first company in the world to develop a software operating system that adheres to ‘voice command,’ wants to rewrite this product into English, through their local subsidiary which was launched in Colombo on Sunday.

The system, known as Huborg, currently responds to commands given only in Korean,

‘This project will take one or two years and will cost at least US$ one million,’ said the president of the Seoul based Soft-Tech Global Inc., Ho Sang Lee, the owners of this software package.

Huborg, was described by Lee as a web voice navigator, that has the capacity to search the website and operate the computer, in response to voice commands.Lee,who is also the president/CEO of Soft-Tech’s local subsidiary Soft-Tech Lanka, further described this function as ‘natural language processing, one of Huborg’s artifical skills.’

He said that it took him eight years and US$ three million to develop this system and added that Huborg is now 11 years old. It is marketed at a price of US$ 500,000. ‘Huborg is the first voice system in the world. She has three functions. Those are conversation, web automation and application automation,’ Lee, describing the product, further said.

The company’s local operations has a staff of 12 local software engineers and five Koreans. ‘We want to increase it to 100 before the end of the year,’ said the company’s chief operating officer Eugene Kim.

Soft-Tech is also expected to provide subcontract work worth US$ four million to Informatics International (Pvt) Ltd., a local software company, on behalf of a local authority in Korea. The agreement in this connection is expected to be signed this week.

Meanwhile, Kim said that some of their clients are the Korean parliament and the Pusan and Seoul municipal councils.

He said that Software Global which began operations in 1996, has also been awarded a US$ 16 million contract to provide the latest toll management software system with regard to four super highways in Korea. ‘It involves total management of the four super highways and some of its components comprise toll collection, advertising and traffic control,’ said Kim.

The annual turnover of the group is in the region of US$ 10 to 15 million, he added. ‘We provide software solutions to organisations such as banks, ports and insurance companies, with exports being our prime target,’ said the chairman of the local company Udaya Boralessa.

‘Soft-Tech wants to make Sri Lanka its marketing window,’ he said. ‘The IT industry only needs a telecommunication cable and is not affected by factors such as the attack at Katunayake, Boralessa said.The local operations are housed at the eighth floor of Ceylinco House, occupying an area of 5,000 square feet in the west wing.