Suzhou Office of Software Institute of Carnegie Mellon University was formally upgraded into "China Office" on March 25. The ceremony was witnessed by Wang Hongsheng, Vice-mayor of Suzhou.

Carnegie Mellon University was founded in 1900 in Pennsylvania, USA, and its Institute of Computer Science was listed by US News & World Report as the first-ranking school in the whole of USA for many times with world?s highest level in computer science education and research. In 2004, Suzhou and International Software Institute of Carnegie Mellon University established relations of cooperation in developing software industry and set up a Suzhou Office to guide the cooperation in software research and development, and to provide consulting, training, CMMI authentication for software industry in Suzhou.

With the ever-increasing influence and service scope, Carnegie Mellon University and Suzhou Municipal Government decided to upgrade the "Suzhou Office" into "China Office" for the purpose of better serving domestic and overseas software enterprises and making greater contributions to the growth of software industry in China.

Statistics show that by 2007, the industrial output value of software industry in Suzhou had reached 27.2 billion RMB, which increased by 34% over the previous year, and revenue from software service amounted to 9.73 billion RMB, while offshore software service outsourcing exceeded 100 million US dollars. So far, there had been 225 software enterprises certified by the State and over 1,000 software products.