RUSSOFT, the nationwide association of more than 70 software development companies from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, took part in the Gartner Outsourcing and IT Services Summit in London on September 20-21, 2010. The association was represented by leading Eastern European providers such as Auriga (www.auriga.com), IBA Group (www.iba-it-group.com), Lanit-Tercom (www.lanit-tercom.com), Luxoft (www.luxoft.com) and Reksoft (www.reksoft.com).

This year’s Gartner summit focused on preparing for the next economic cycle and developing new approaches for service aggregation and management. In years past, the Eastern European nearshore industry gained attention quickly as an easily accessible and high-end outsourcing destination. Today that trend has continued. According to recent Gartner surveys, the core issues facing European sourcing decision makers include optimizing the multi-sourced environment, improving IT flexibility and accessing low cost IT services.

The RUSSOFT presentation on the advantages of outsourcing to Eastern Europe, delivered by RUSSOFT Board member and Luxoft president and CEO, Dmitry Loschinin, provoked considerable interest. During the session, Loschinin discussed the benefits of outsourcing to Eastern Europe and how the location in particular offers strengths such as geographical proximity, competitive costs, and economic stability over alternative regions. The presentation also included vital statistics on the area as well as customer success stories to better-illustrate how companies are able to leverage the location and regional expertise within to meet critical outsourcing needs.

“The recent Gartner surveys and discussion at the summit reinforce a true need for a global delivery capability, which helps companies to increase flexibility, optimize the cost structure and gain access to low-cost IT talent. As an organization with continuous focus and investment into this type of delivery model, Luxoft is more equipped than ever to help companies innovate, grow and succeed,” said Dmitry Loschinin, president and CEO, Luxoft. “Luxoft is proud to have been featured alongside some of the top development companies in the market today at the Gartner Outsourcing and IT Services Summit and we are confident that our guidance, expertise and proven results in the Eastern European region and other geographies will help our customers exceed their business goals.”

Andrei Pronin, General Manager of Auriga, added: “One of important trends in IT Outsourcing indicated by Gartner analysts is industrialization/unification of basic ITO services. This should lead to dividing the service providers into two groups. One group is ITO utility giants focused on the economy of scale and driving costs down. The other is more flexible, cutting-edge and agile players working on addressing highly specific customer needs and extending IT frontiers, for whom the main priority will be customer satisfaction. Due to our ability to handle non-standard assignments and establish efficient collaboration between the provider and client teams, Eastern Europe is well-positioned to play the key role in the second group. In the recent 2010 comprehensive worldwide customer satisfaction survey, Auriga was in top 15, leaving behind such companies as Google, Infosys, Capgemini, and many others, including all top 10 by revenue in Europe identified by Gartner during the summit. That illustrates well what the natural strength of Eastern Europe is, and why one should seriously consider it as an outsourcing destination for the next project.”

Alexander Egorov, CEO of Reksoft, further commented: “At the Gartner Summit, we found ourselves in the enviable situation of not having to convince delegates of our software engineers’ high professional qualifications. The region’s talents, it turns out, are already famed far and wide. With the hard sell done for us, we were delighted to discuss the real business value which our innovative web-based and mobile solutions bring to customers.”

Dr. Valentin Kazan, Vice President of IBA Group and the head of the IBA’s delegation at the Summit, said: “We came here with the idea to show that Eastern Europe is the right destination for outsourcing projects. The region is one of the most promising alternatives to traditional IT outsourcing destinations. IT companies in Eastern Europe have accumulated extensive experience in outsourcing. They have highly qualified IT resources, a well Developed education system, and a favourable geographic location – very close to Western European clients.”

Valentin Makarov, RUSSOFT President commented: “Discussions at Gartner Outsourcing Summit indicated a rather new important trend. In a time when IT-outsourcing services are becoming more and more a kind of “utilities”, high technological skills and creativity of Russian engineers serve as very attractive differentiators. Our huge experience of sophisticated project-work provides our customers with an effective instrument able to solve problems in critical applications and to find core business solutions in time critical issues”.