Obviously for Australian companies, Russia is not a traditional outsourcing destination. Why it make a sense to think about sending your IT project to Russia?

In the begin I’ll try to downgrade couple myths about Russia and then present some reasons, why Russia should be considered for software projects outsourcing.

Myths.

1. Russia is very far away, so there is huge time difference between Australia and Russia.

1st part of the sentence is true, Russia is far, however due to it’s huge size there are many big cities in the Eastern part of Russia (Siberia and Russian Far East), where time difference with Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and other Australian cities is just 3, 2, 1 or even 0 (zero) hrs.

2.  Russian programmers don’t speak English.

English is a part of the standard education program in Russia for many years. An average Russian boy or girl studies English for 6-7 years in school and 2-3 years in University. While some Russian developers don’t have enough conversations practice, so indeed the level of speaking English may be not perfect, as a rule, developer, especially working in an offshore outsourcing business some time has a decent level of written English, an adequate for business and technical correspondence and IM communications.

3. Russian developers are crazy expensive, so outsourcing there doesn’t have much economic sense.

Such statement may be partly true if we are speaking about Russian capital, Moscow and possibly in some degree St.Peterburg. In other Russian cities, salaries of developers (and consequentially prices of Russian companies, that specialise in offshore outsourcing) are far from being crazy. More specifically, rates starts from around $(US) 20 per work hr or sometimes even a bit less (we are talking b2b transactions) and rarely exceed $ (US) 40. That maybe not the cheapest possible rates in the planet, but far from being higherst as well and below I will write about benefits, that justify that rates.

Benefits.

1. Russia is already a very popular software development outsourcing destination for customers from Western Europe and North America. Russian software export industry total revenue reached $1.8 billion in 2006. Now Russia is #3 country in offshore outsoucring business (after India and China) with share about 3% of market. So it is a big markey, with large number of providers that allow smart client to shop around and select from many possible partners.

2. Russian education system is focused on technologies, since and engineering. Student teams from Russian gradually every year amonth the winners of ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest . That strong education system provide good supply of bight talents to software development industry. Russian developers are considered especially good in projects that require the use of complex math and physic.

3. Business and general culture in Russia much closer to Australian in compare with Asian offshore destinations. In recent UC Irvine software outsourcing research culture factor was mentioned as being important for more than 2/3 companies using software outsourcing.

4. Russian companies manage to keep low (3-4%) annual employees attrition rate, that helps to avoid overstaffing and reduce risk of project delays.

5. Russian developers are used to think out of box and be flexible to adopt to changing requirements.

For additional information you may check that article It is written in 2006, so salary figures for Russian developers are not so attractive now, but in general there is a good analysis.

How can I help you?

With 16 years of experience of doing business in Russia and Eastern Europe and 10 years experience in offshore outsourcing I can provide you with qualified advice about possibilities that IT outsourcing to Russia opens for your business.  Contact me to schedule a meeting or phone/online conference.