Russian Software Development in the News

Two recent articles about Russia caught my attention as our Flatsourcing development team is based in Kazan, Russia. Last week’s Business Week featured an article on the current oil fueled economic boom in Russia by Jason Bush, Russia: How Long Can the Fun Last?. In it he points to the software industry as a showcase example of Russia can and is moving from natural resource-based economic success into knowledge-based growth.

And Russia is well ahead of most other resource-rich countries in its economic development, with a long tradition of education, science, and industry. Now, its tech companies are starting to give India’s outsourcing sector a run for the money. Software exports will top $1.5 billion this year, vs. just $128 million in 2001. “We really can compete on a global scale,” says Dmitry A. Loschinin, chief executive of Russia’s largest software developer, Luxoft.

This is really interesting to us as we continue to build our partnership with our Russian team. I have tremendous respect for their education system after traveling to Kazan last spring. I believe in that because of the strength of their education system in science and engineering disciplines that Russia is becoming a world leader in software development very quickly. And we plan to be part of that through Flatsourcing.

Speaking of Russian developers, the New York Times featured an article today by Eric Pfanner titled New To Russia: Google Struggles to Find Its Footing about Google’s struggles in competing in the Russian search engine market. My take on it is that the challenge has been issued and Google will continue to climb in market share in Russia.

The company’s difficulties in Russia probably have more to do with the complexities of the language than with politics.

“Our understanding of Russian was not as good as we wanted it to be,” said Kannan Pashupathy, head of international engineering at Google. Google revamped its Russian site last week, Mr. Pashupathy said, improving its ability to deal with Russian, a complex language in which nouns may be one of three genders and be declined in up to six cases.

This article also is great read. It’s fun for us to see this focus on technology and software development in Russia, and it is clear that our little secret won’t be such for long.