When did the downturn hit the
region? Roman Foeckl: “The Romanian economy, in both private and govern- ment sectors, has been heavily affected in 2009 and was at its worst in Q4 of 2009, partly due also to presidential election and political uncertainty at the same time. Since Q1 of 2010, we’ve seen increasing stability and a slow, but steady recovery process.” Romanian market confidence has
been growing since Q1 2010, and this trend continues more so in the second quarter. The outlook for 2010 is defi- nitely optimistic, he says. Romania is still a great place for software develop- ment. “We can tell from the significant growth reported by our second busi- ness unit that is dealing with nearshore software development. More and more software development is being relocated from Western Europe to Romania due to highly skilled developers and a better cost structure.” Software developers in Romania are very talented, he says. This is partly
due to a strong focus on math, physics and informatics established many years ago. “When looking at the educational system in Romania, one notices a much tougher and more competitive high-school and university period, with students’ math skills put permanently to the test, much more than, for exam- ple, in German high schools, and this reflects in students’ skills. Motivation of high school and university students is on a broad base higher than in western Europe. We expect 2010 to be a great year for our company and to generate a double digit growth. The Romanian IT sector, from a software development point of view, will also do quite well. The Romanian IT hardware market is however more affected by the current economic situation and will need some more time to recover. “ Valerica Dragomir (above), Executive Director of Romania IT association
ANIS tells IT Europa: “About the evolution in 2010, according to feedback received from companies, the context is slightly more favorable in Q1 2010 than in the same period of 2009. The private sector customers are more stable and they adopted crisis mitigation plans, that help them coordinate strategies and decide investment/opening of new IT projects. However the number and value of projects coming from the private sector is still significantly smaller than before the economic downturn – which leads to increased competition
and growing efforts of IT companies for smaller results. Although, as mentioned, rate of
growth is nowhere near what it used to be (2003-2008 – average growth rate year on year of +20%), the industry and companies look more stable than last year, from the point of view of opportunities generation, fluctuation of personnel and deployment of develop- ment and sales strategies, she reports. Also, the public sector, which used
to represent an important part of the market for IT projects, is rather “frozen”, which means very few if at all, projects are announced. “We are pleased to see that projects are prepared and intentions are announced for consultations, and we rather hope that when the time comes and funding will be available, there will be more market for IT companies. Public financed projects – either by Government funds (rather unlikely on the short to medium term) of by European structural funds – seem to be the best chance for our industry.” Recovery is a theme for Cisco as well. Zoran Radumilo: “The channel is
growing – not as much as in the past – and the capacity is not expanding as much as in the past. It is a lower single digit growth. Capabilities are growing more, though, the partners are looking to verticals with solutions - not to go everywhere with everything, but to focus on a project and area in a vertical market and a given set of customers in order to be different, and prepare for the future. This is giving fantastic results. Cisco made a huge step in order to prepare the partners, planning the activities with the partner and this is paying back now.” There are channel opportunities of all types – smart phones for example
- where channels are given the chances to develop applications, and another possibilities in the new architecture and new ways of communicating. The data centre, storage and virtualisation abilities are becoming crucial. “The virtual computing environment that we announced gives us a solution with the best of networking, computing security storage and virtualisation, which gives us an end to end solution. Once you have those components, then the partners can satisfy the customer needs in a simple, better and faster way. So today – the leapfrogging with technology is something of a characteristic of these coun- tries. The people are looking for the new technologies – they need to have the
22
30 APR 2010
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32