The European Tech Tour Association (ETT), an independent organization committed to the development of emerging technology companies in Europe, announced its plans to organize the second Tech Tour visit to the Russian high tech sector.

The Russian IT industry attracts foreign investments despite the turmoil in the financial markets since it is one the most promising sectors with the annual growth rate of 25%.

The first Tech Tour in Russia resulted in investments into the domestic tech Yandex, Parallels, Acronis and SJ Labs. And as mentioned in Tech Tour announcement, the past few years brought to light a number of technology start-ups in application development, internet services and fables design which urge for the new visit.

This time the projects will be selected in areas of new materials and processes, electronics equipment, software applications, voice and data transmission, value-added services and wireless solutions.

The recent AMI Partners research forecasts that small to medium businesses in Russia and Poland are to spend approximately $10 billion on ICT products in 2008, which represents 15 per cent growth from the past year’s volume.

About 40 per cent of Russia's one million SMBs are equipped with personal computers and generate the highest ICT spending in the region. In addition to that, the report points out that Russia has experienced significant growth as a provider of IT outsourcing and software development. These factors make Russia one of the largest Eastern European markets by GDP and among the highest spenders on ICT in the region.

Although the Russian ICT market has still been dominated by hardware sales, the share of IT services has been steadily growing over the past three months.

A recent study released by full-service strategic advisory firm for Global Outsourcing and Investments Tholons and Global Services announced the Top 50 outsourcing cities of choice in 2008. The research identified the locations that are globally recognized for their “specific” outsourcing services offerings as well as the ones that are establishing themselves as specialized locations for particular sourcing function.

In a way, the choice of the right city has become more important than the choice of the country. It is rather the city (than the country), which represents a more accurate package of attributes that service providers seek.

Source: Top 50 Emerging Global Outsourcing Cities

St. Petersburg was selected as one of the established sourcing locations for engineering services and high-end R&D. With the large pool of talented engineering graduates, robust IT infrastructure and strong quality traditions, St. Petersburg has long been seen as one of the key outsourcing destination in Eastern Europe.

Another Russian city mentioned in the report is Moscow which scored as an established location for product development and R&D and an emerging city for engineering services but lost seven points to St. Petersburg in the overall rating.