IT in Belarus
At present, IT industry in Belarus is in the spotlight. It is considered as a solid basis for country’s progressive development.
Some statistics
According to experts, there are more than 500 companies operating on the Belorussian IT market, but only about 200 companies immediately export the software, and among them there are more than 20 big companies. Also the majority of all the companies are situated in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
The most part of all the companies use different development frameworks, various programming languages, and methodologies of programs creation. This helps to satisfy customers’ most varied requirements. Owing to this, Belorussian developers cooperate with companies from EU, USA, CIA countries, Canada, and to a lesser extent with Asian ones.
In Gartner’s IT outsourcing 2008 report Belarus is classified among emerging countries having chances to enter in leaders’ category.
By estimate of Russian independent experts, in 2008 overall volume of Belorussian software development market exceeded 400 mln. USD, among which more than 300 mln. USD goes for software exportations. Even in the crisis, in 2008 the average industry’s growth is at about 10%. This indicates that Belorussian IT sector did not really entered in crisis phase, and possesses time and resource reserves to avoid it. But anyway, Belorussian developers did not managed to escape from crisis influence, especially those ones oriented exclusively on software exportations (for banking and financial sectors particularly). The most actual cooperation model is the development of finished software systems which are easier to replicate and sell on easy terms.
Brains are the most important
There is also a relatively vast pool of qualified IT specialists in Belarus. By estimations, there are more than 15 000 software developers: more than 6 000 of them work for exportations. Annually, Belarusian prepare at about 3 500 software developers, but only 1 000 of them go directly to work in the industry. This amount is said to be satisfactory and not provoking staff hunger like in Russia.
Historically, Belorussian software developers have a solid basic knowledge and are able to resolve sophisticated problems, and thus create complex science-driven programs. Belarus geographical positions permits to be a bridge between Western Europe and Russia (close location to the customers’ sites in EU countries and the possibility to scale up the staff on Russian market.
What else?
As to the legal and governmental environment of the IT industry in Belarus, it’s to notice that the legal frames are forming at the moment. There were already some important legal acts admitted in this sphere, especially: intellectual property protection, patent and licensing law, law concerning standardization and certification, and some other important legislative acts are submitted to adoption to Belarusian Parliament.
The government, also being aware of the industry’s potential and importance makes his best to support it. In particular, nowadays there are some important programs concerning IT sphere: governmental electronic communication development program till 2010 named “Electronic Belarus – e-Belarus”; presidential program “Citizens’ computerization”, and others.
We should make also a special focus on several business associations named “Infopark” and “High-Tech Park”. When the first associations has mostly consultative force, the second one, widely supported by the government, provides its participants with important tax and some other benefits.
(See more detailed information about these business associations in this section)
As you can see Belorussian IT and software development market possesses a huge growth potential despite several drawbacks. Here in this section you can have a look at Belarus, find some statistics and information about the major events in Belorussian IT industry. So don’t miss any updates!
