Global IT Outsourcing: Seeking New Places
The global market for IT outsourcing services includes a number of countries and regions that, due to their specific conditions, are attractive for starting such a business. In fact, a certain geographical division of labor can be observed in this field. Throughout history, the division of labor has powered the universal economy, it’s no wonder outsourcing is so popular in the software development industry. Some countries are the best at producing ideas and concepts, while others provide better conditions for doing the technical part of the job.
IT outsourcing service companies are mostly located in economically less developed countries which, however, have outstanding level of technical science and engineering resources. China and India were monopolists in this market for a long time using the large gap between local prices and prices in Western Europe and the US Today we can certainly talk about another great opportunity: European outsourcing.
Eastern European countries join the game
The Eastern European region contains a number of countries that are different from each other and from their western neighbors by economic level and industrial development. Most of them were under the influence of the USSR for some time and had financial difficulties after its collapse. Although many have joined the EU by now, they still have much lower prices and wages.
The industrial fall in the Eastern European countries urged people to look for new markets where they could get better positions. Software development turned out to be a real alternative. Being a purely intellectual branch (a number of brains, that’s all you need to get started), programming doesn’t require big expenses to start a new project. The only thing one has to invest in is a good education.
IT outsourcing to Ukraine: a good alternative?
Among other members of the Eastern European region, Ukraine is one of the most attractive for Western IT companies. It currently has the largest number of software and web professionals, while salary levels here are among the lowest in Europe. As for education, it is one of the strong qualities of Ukraine: there are several large technical universities in the main cities of the state. Hundreds of IT students graduate each year creating a rich substrate for national software development companies. On the other hand, Ukrainian IT companies are strongly oriented towards collaboration with Western European and US companies and therefore IT outsourcing is very popular here.
At the beginning of 2012 there were about 6 thousand IT outsourcing service companies in Ukraine. They are working with clients from various places. The main countries that outsource to Ukraine are Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, Italy, USA, ANZ. The geographical location of the country is quite encouraging – it only takes a couple of hours to get there by plane from any of the Western European cities. This is a great advantage, as a project owner who has outsourced his project to a Ukrainian team of developers can easily visit the location of his collaborators from time to time in case he needs to interact with them personally.
Thus, Ukraine is an emerging regional leader of IT outsourcing in Eastern Europe. As the demand for IT outsourcing services grows faster and faster around the world, more and more software development companies may consider using the services of Ukrainian IT outsourcing providers. Well, how about joining this promising trend?
