Ukraine: a Prospective Player on the World Software Outsourcing
Market
The destruction of the Soviet Union about 15 years ago, made a
huge country with a great level of IT science divided into small
bricks. Nowadays, despite Russia's expansion into the world
software development market, Ukraine keeps playing an important
role here too. There are several prerequisites for this.
Prerequisites
Traditionally, Ukraine always was a technical region of the
USSR. No wonder, the IT education was and still is one of the
most popular and respective education in the region. Such
well-known Ukrainian universities as Kyiv National
Technical University, Donetsk National Technical University etc. as well
as new establishments with more innovative approach for IT
specialists education, such as Donetsk State Institute of
Artificial Intelligence and others, educate a new prospective
generation of young IT professionals, ambitious and
purposeful.
It's obvious, Ukrainian students win in international contests,
and show true professionalism and ability to enter a business
life immediately, hence, to play the first fiddle in the labour
market. As the latest example, one can remember students of Kharkiv National
University of Radio Electronics that became first place
winners of the International Web Development Contest (I.C.W.D.I.C.
2005) held by XITEX Software Company in spring 2005.
That is why governments of European countries encourage
Ukrainian programmers to come and to work there. Germany is the
best example of a country that understands all pros and cons of
Ukrainian IT professional, thus it's the country that sees its
benefits of employing Ukrainian programmers.
Another one important factor is the cost of labour. In Ukraine,
usual hourly rates for programmers are $10-$15. Although they
are little bigger than Indian ones, they are still 1.5 times
lesser than Russian ones and several times lesser than American
or European costs. If you consider the high level of
professionalism and responsibility, then you add a European mind
and time zone, plus a fluent English of the most of IT people,
you realize that Ukraine is that happy medium each company looks
for. Hence, many companies that outsource have already realized
it. Ukraine's Prospects
Due to the Market Visio's research, the volume of Ukrainian
IT-services export in 2003 was estimated to be $70M, 40% more in
comparison with 2002. The market prospects for 2005 were to be
$150M; that is three times more in three years.
There are about 300 public companies that work for export. They
are located mainly in big cities such as Kyiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv,
Dnipropetrovsk etc. There are also a huge amount of groups of
professionals who are mainly engaged in export on a level of
freelancers. The total number of IT specialists engaged in
IT-export services was about 10,000 in 2003 and grew
considerably during next years.
Everything mentioned above shows that Ukraine has great
prospects to become and equal player to the most known leaders
of the market. Its well-developed IT infrastructure, level of
services, and professionalism of programmers made Ukrainian
companies able to compete for complex and complicated projects
with other well-known developers. There are several companies
that invest in their own software solutions and market them
internationally with success. However, all of them are engaged
into smaller or bigger software development projects as
subcontractors.
The next step of Ukrainian gait into the world IT market seems
to be a wide establishment of offshore development centers based
on currently existing software development companies.
Prerequisites are obvious: - Ukrainian IT
companies have whole infrastructure required to develop reliable
custom application and deliver it in time.
- The gross
yearly expenditure per one programmer will vary from $20,000 to
$30,000.
- Ukraine's time zone is GMT +02:00. Hence, all
programmers and project managers will be available on daytime
for any European company.
The only thing remains to be done, though. Ukrainian IT
companies are making only their first steps in self-promotion.
The more professional they become in this field, the more
obvious it would be that Ukraine becomes a competitive player on
the world software outsourcing market.