Software Development Outsourcing: Россия вышла на третье место в мире

[Mr.Val]

Russia: Russia Number Three in the World for Software Development, Minister Claims

Russian Minister for Information Technology Leonid Reitman told journalists that Russia occupied the third place in the world after India and China in the number of software development orders it receives from abroad. Reitman based his claims on the findings of an international consulting company specialising in outsourcing industries. Vedomosti drew on opinions of major players on the Russian IT market, who say that the volume of the outsourcing orders reached US$1.5.billion in 2007 for Russia, complemented by the sales of ready-made software packages for the estimated sum of US$550-600 million.

Significance: Russia and Eastern European countries are emerging as serious candidates for winning IT outsourcing orders from the current leaders India and China, where labour prices are continuously growing and are likely to reach U.S. levels in five years. The size of the Indian software development market reached US$20 billion in 2007, and US$2 billion in China. In Russia itself, the market for software outsourcing is growing by some 40-45% due to the benevolent attitude of the state, which has already taken some steps to create a favourable tax regime for the IT industry and may go further as the IT sector ideally fits its programmatic aspiration to diversify the economy towards more knowledge-based production.