Bangalore, Oct. 29: The former cold war superpower Russia is slowly emerging as a IT hub in Europe with over 2,500 small and medium software companies in the country. And with the соuntry having highly-skilled human resource pool is considered as a long term threat to India in software services and solutions market. The country has over 2 lakh programmes, 11 million computers and over 8 million Internet users with many global majors like Intel, HP, Motorola and Sun Microsystems having already set-up developmental centres.
A high level delegation of Russian IT firms have for made a maiden visit to the city to participate in the Bangalore IT:COM 2002.
"We will be visiting some Indian IT companies here and study the market here," RosBusinessCounsulting (RBC) chief technology officer Maxim Filamofitsky who is, part of the Russian delegation participating at the five day mega IT event said.
Russia IT market is estimated to be $3.9 billion in 2002, growing at rate of 18 per cent and accounts of 1 per cent of its GDP as compared to 5 per cent in the Western countries. Software market valued $600-800 million in 2001, growing at an impressive 25 per cent. Russian companies have taken up software outsourcing in a big way and now contributes about $120-150 million to the total software market. In the long run, Russia which has highly-skilled human resource pool, is considered as a major competitor to India in software services and solutions market. RBC is the only Russian IT firm to be listed on the
main Russian stock exchanges and provides mission critical applications to large financial institutions and government agencies.
The team will be interacting with local firms including a few visits to IT majors in the city. A representative of the Russian delegation said, even though the Russian cornpanies are small in size, they can attract talent and do business with European and Central Asian countries.
"We want to learn from the Indian experience and replicate in our country," one IT head honcho said.
