Report presentation:
From February to April, 2010, the Russian Software Developers Association (Russoft) conducted its 7th Annual Survey of the Russian Software Export Industry. In the course of this survey, Russoft collected more than 160 quality questionnaires. In addition to questionnaires, Russoft analysts gathered a significant amount of information from other sources, primarily reports of research agencies, official reports of the companies and media publications. This report was edited by Andrey Terekhov, a recognized guru of Russian software development industry, Head of System programming chair at the Saint-Petersburg State university and CEO of Lanit-Terkom.
As a result, the document presents a clear picture of the state of the industry and highlights the main trends of its development. The acute phase of the global economic crisis ended in 2009, and, by the end of last year, we even witnessed some signs of market recovery that continued at the beginning of 2010. This led to a quality change in the situation, so we felt it was important to analyze how the market was reacting to ongoing changes and make some assumptions about the future.
The Russian software export industry continued to grow in 2009. These exports were largely impacted by the sharp drop in the Russian IT market (according to IDC, this drop made up of 37%). However, even for their total turnover (including the Russian market), the revenue of exporters was reduced only by 5% while exports grew in general by 5% (up to $2.75 billion).
There was further growth in the software products segment (in 2009 for the first time its volume of sales exceeded $1 billion), the providers of software technology services preserved their share in the exports, and only the Russian development centers of foreign companies reduced the exports of their services. The geography of exports has expanded and shifted further to CIS countries and to the new Russian markets (South East Asia, Africa and Latin America).
The industry has changed its assessment of government policies. Now, it is more demanding and critical. There is an emerging trend to prepare the companies for the growth which is reflected in the desire to attract investment for development in 2011.
