Technology Analysts Reconfirm Russia's Position in the IT Outsourcing Market

Keynoting at the Central and Eastern European Outsourcing Summit in Kiev on September 12-13^th, IDC and Forrester Research analysts underlined the growing interest to CEE as the offshore/nearshore location of choice.

Pascal Matzke of Forrester Research contemplated in his presentation if CEE is a viable alternative to India. He emphasized that this region offers an excellent university education in computer science and other engineering majors, highly educated workforce with good abstract thinking and problem solving skills, and good English language skills.

IDC's Robert Farish agreed on a number of benefits that IT outsourcing companies from CEE could offer to prospective customers. In particular, he mentioned vendors' location and proximity, cultural familiarities, minimal time differences, lower travel costs, language skills, quicker delivery times and, above all, good quality levels. In his opinion, Russia as an outsourcing destination scores good in resource skill, infrastructure, business and regional as well as in financial factors.

Among CEE countries, Russia stands out with the largest resource pool and the dynamic and mature vendor landscape. The country ranked third in the volume of outsourcing contracts globally in the outsourcing market volume (1.6 bln. USD in 2006) and is well positioned to grow at 30 % rate in the next few years.