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Hitachi Software (President: Hiroyuki Kanekiyo, Headquarters: Yokohama) has begun full-scale activities to acquire CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) and established the CMMI Promotion Center on June 11 to promote the acquisition of CMMI. In January, the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry announced that it will create a Japanese version of the software process maturity indicators based on CMM widely used in the U.S. This is for procuring government-used software based on a vendor's technological capabilities, thereby enhancing the competitiveness of the Japanese software industry.

To meet government policy, and to demonstrate that Hitachi Software is an international software vendor, the company has decided to begin specific activities aimed at the acquisition of the CMMI. It intends to acquire CMMI Level 3 by the end of this year and then Level 5. If this is achieved, Hitachi Software may win more government procurement bids and receive more orders for UP development from overseas customers.

CMMI refers to the software process maturity indicators created by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. and is a new standard that retains the characteristics of CMM and is compatible with ISO15504. Although the Japanese version is not yet available, Hitachi Software chose to go with CMMI because it is promising.

Those responsible for process improvement, assessors for example, will be assigned to every business unit. The CMM Promotion Center supports company-wide deployment of CMMI, and the Education Center provides practical education to improve the processes. Hence, Hitachi software intends to deploy process improvement activities throughout the entire company and train staff to be leading assessors with the ability to qualify a process as CMMI-compliant.

Hitachi Software has focused on quality improvement activities under the motto "Quality First (QF)" and was the first in the industry to acquire ISO9001 certification in 1995. It will improve the software development process to cope with increased development risks by quickly developing C/S and Web-related systems and introducing new technologies.