Ukraine becomes Europe`s No. 1 IT outsourcing powerhouse

Tuesday, March 22, 2016 - 14:16 (EET) Section: Latest news

Ukraine ranks first in Europe by the volume of IT outsourcing services for maintenance, support and modernization of IT infrastructure, which are provided by specialized companies whose core business includes programming, website development, software support and maintenance of equipment, according to IT Outsourcing News portal.
”Ukraine is No. 1 in Europe in terms of IT professionals, estimated at 90,000 people, and 200,000 are expected by 2020,” IT Outsourcing News wrote.
Nearly 100,000 Ukrainian programmers serve thousands of companies as the demand for IT workforce is constantly growing on the global market. This figure may double over the next four years, the portal said.
According to IT Outsourcing News, the export volume of Ukraine`s software development industry reached at least $2.5 billion in 2015 (No. 3 export sector).
It is noted that the U.S. market is the main destination for Ukrainian IT firms, with an estimated 80% volume of exported services. The United States also remains Ukraine`s largest partner for joint R&D activities (around 45% of the companies involved), followed by EU countries and Israel.
Ukraine has more than 100 R&D centers operated by such global high-tech companies as Cisco, Oracle, Rakuten, Samsung. At this, Kyiv is the most popular location for opening an R&D center, concentrating over half of all such bases in the country. Other key cities for R&D activity include Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv and Vinnytsia.
As UaPosition reported earlier, according to the Global Information Technology Report compiled by the World Economic Forum, Ukraine ranked 71st in the world based on the Networked Readiness Index, which assesses the factors, policies and institutions that enable a country to fully leverage information and communication technologies (ICTs), having improved its position by 10 points as compared to the previous year`s figure.
In February 2016, four Ukrainian companies, namely, SoftServe, Eleks, Miratech and Softengi, were included in the list of the world`s best outsourcing service providers. In addition, such companies as EPAM (U.S.), Luxoft (Switzerland), Ciklum (Denmark), Intetics (U.S.), TEAM International Services (U.S.), Softjourn (U.S.), which have their R&D centers in Ukraine, have also topped the list of the global sector leaders.