subject: IT Outsourcing to Romania - The Buzz and Bargains [print this page] IT Outsourcing to Romania - The Buzz and Bargains
As an outcome of the EU integration for Easter European countries, like Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland, a lot of the large companies in Western Europe as well as United States and Canada, are focusing their attention on this part of Europe to search for reliable and cheaper programming and web designing services.
Among these countries, a lot of the market share is hold up by Romania, a country with a somewhat rough history. After the communist period, the industry has boomed in various domains, including the information technology section, where a lot of talented young people have put a lot of effort into. This created an elaborated competition for former Asian outsourcing destinations, and now the situation is fairly inclined in favor of Romanian IT companies.
With an evolving software development outsourcing industry, Romania is famous for a high level of education and proficient labor skills. They are especially good at language skills, due to their latin-based language, which allows for a wide range of accents to be learned easily and effectively. Young Romanian students usually know at least two different foreign languages, such as English and French. German, Spanish and other European major languages are also common among Romanian schools and universities, so a lot of foreign companies have established their call centers here.
IT trading has become an important part of Romanian economy, which currently involves around 20,000 people. Three years ago, the outsourcing of IT services reached nearly $300 million, according to an estimation made by th Romanian Association for Electronic and Software Industries. The outsourcing flow is mainly centered on R&D outsourcing, security and embedded software development, and mechanical engineering. The famous anti-virus tool called BitDefender is actually created by a Romanian company called SoftWin. In 2003, Microsoft acquired intellectual property rights over the RAV Antivurs from GeCad, showing an increased interest of Western companies in local Romanian IT businesses.
