NATIONAL SURVEY
of sales and expenses is something they are all looking at.” “Government spending was important when we spoke last time, but we
have noticed that we were moving into a ‘new normal’ – a term to express the new rules and ways of doing business. This was driven by several fac- tors – liquidity and credit shortages, unemployment rising - GDP is still in the red in most countries. We have seen government injected stimulus pack-
are big countries with high relative populations, and the national infrastructure that they have been building up using resources from outside.” Deutsche Telekom has invested in Hungary and is now in Romania, and this
has driven both broadband penetration, and the broadband service and the SLAs now possible, he says. “They are attracting the customers and residential users as well as entrepreneurs to use the technology in a different way. This will encourage them to leapfrog the western countries. We have new service provider, new architectures and providers which are changing the customers’ experiences.” The economic crisis was certainly felt in manufacturing and smaller busi-
nesses, though. “The crisis impacted all sector – none were untouched and it was severe. But now, every customer and every entrepreneur – every owner of a small or big business is looking at how they can make themselves more efficient, to change and improve the business model. The impression we have today is that they are really looking at technology as a way to improve productivity and our partners are doing the same. When we talk about the partner landscape, we see the partners themselves using the technology to improve productivity – just as we as a company have done. So it is a proven model – it is working well, the companies are applying this, and the governments are discussing this, because the new structures and new technologies give them the chance to change the model, but driving costs out of operations. The cost
Macedonia Bulgaria Hungary Slovenia Romania
Montenegro Albania Serbia Croatia
Bosnia/Herzogovina
ages and they are now looking for a return, and want to see what returns they can get from infrastructure and companies. Some are now looking to take out the money soon , some will wait for better times.”
The stimulus packages have made a big difference and it is assumed that it
was the right time to do it. “Because this is the time in the crisis to review the rules and the ‘new normal’ stuff.” Some government or external support may continue to be needed. Roman
Foeckl (above), security specialist CoSoSys’ CEO says that government will be needed for some time: “The Romanian Government is supporting technology companies, mostly indirectly by letting them operate freely without hindering their activity through over-regulation. The government is also offering lower taxes to high tech companies focusing on software development and hiring Romanian specialists, in an effort to keep valuable developers in Romania.” CoSoSys was founded early 2004 with a
Ease of doing business
Country
69 42 41
58 45 77 89 90
110 119
Rank 2009 Rank 2010
32 44 47 53 55 71
82 88
103 116
Source: World Bank index
30 APR 2010
21
strong business focus on software develop- ment, marketing and support of applications working with portable storage devices such as USB Flash Drives and flash based MP3 Players. In a second business unit CoSoSys is develop- ing and marketing endpoint security solutions that enable a secure working environment with portable storage devices. Talking to other regional companies, though
we find some issues with advanced technology sales and channels. Mike Augustine, Force10 Networks’ country manager for the UK, admits that channel in Hungary are immature, hence the discussion on page 12 of this issue of IT Europa on the rights and wrongs of using the distributor’s skills in the country to make the sale.
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