Pros and cons of IT outsourcing in Ukraine
There has never been such a great place to outsource your software development, testing and other IT services to.
In 2010, Ukraine has named the best destination for outsourcing software development for clients from Western Europe. Does the situation change since then? This article describes the pros and cons of IT outsourcing in Ukraine.
AFFORDABLE DEVELOPMENT PRICE
Among the countries with the lowest cost of living, Ukraine occupies 6th place. Ten years ago, the cost of labor here was generally the lowest in the world, but because of the heat market, IT professionals decided to raise prices for their services. Even despite this fact, Ukrainian prices still remain very attractive for US or Western European customers. By transferring to Ukraine all their "production capacity" in the IT sector, Western companies can reduce their costs by 40-60%.
HIGH LEVEL OF COMPETENCE
Historically, Ukraine has been the technological center of the Soviet Union for decades, and this heritage has echoes today. There are technical universities in every major city, giving us great talents and letting us build good and effective IT teams, and more and more young people choose technical professions. However, we can not say that the graduates are 100% ready and specialists can immediately start to work on complex projects.
Every major IT company in Ukraine has its own training courses for developers, designers, testers and managers. So, they produce a skilled labor force for themselves. Notably, such courses are often either free or cost less than a laptop.
Ukraine ranked third in the world in the number of people with higher education, the second largest number of holders of academic master's degrees and 4th place in the world in the number of Certified IT Professionals. Ukrainian developers have shown good results in the global online competition for IT specialists, in which 11 million people from 50 countries are taking part. 56 Ukrainians were the first in the individual events for a variety of programming languages, Web frameworks, working with databases and graphics. CONVENIENT TIME ZONE
The time zone of Ukraine - GMT + 2. It is very convenient for Europe since working hours are matched. Even for the US, Ukraine is the best choice compared to the time zones of Russia, India or China.
FAST AND CHEAP BROADBAND INTERNET
In the ranking of internet speed among countries, Ukraine occupies 21st place. However, such ratings will never include the fact that it takes just one day to connect to a 100-megabit connection in any major city in Ukrainian and it costs no more than $5 a month!
WHAT ABOUT THE DISADVANTAGES?
Many people first think of the fighting in the east. Although some military activity is still observed in the areas, it focuses 10% of the country. The rest of the area is perfectly safe in their flowing, peaceful life. The current situation in Ukraine can be compared with Israel. They used to live in constant conflict with the Palestinians, but the country is one of the world's technology centers around the world. The ecosystem for startups in Israel is the second after Silicon Valley and Google, Microsoft and IBM open research centers right there.
CONCLUSION
The largest share of the outsourcing market in Central and Eastern Europe, 16,000 IT graduates per year, pro-Western orientation, membership in the WTO and the highest level of democracy among all post-Soviet countries outside the EU - all of the above make Ukraine an attractive country for the transmission of IT outsourcing projects.