Ukraine is one of the leading IT outsourcing destinations in Eastern Europe for multiple reasons, such as highly-qualified developers, moderate prices, good English proficiency, innovative approach to development etc.
When Western European and US companies consider cooperation with a remote team, they take into account various factors. In this article, we’ve tried to cover the most important criteria for choosing a software development provider.
We have collected the data from the reports by PwC Ukraine, Bloomberg, A. T. Kearney, IT Ukraine 2016 by Ukraine Digital News and AVentures, European Software Development Salary Survey by O’Reilly, and other sources. These statistics and facts demonstrate Ukraine’s latest achievements in the IT sector and the reasons why so many companies choose to cooperate with Ukrainian developers when they plan their outsourcing strategies. So here are 25 stats which prove that IT outsourcing to Ukraine can bring tangible value to your business.
Talent pool
- Over 185,000 IT professionals and 1,600+ IT companies are located in Ukraine.
- Software engineering workforce is expected to increase to over 220,000 by 2021.
- Over 76,000 highly qualified IT professionals are involved in IT outsourcing sector in Kyiv, which is the biggest Ukrainian IT center.
- Lviv and Kharkiv house 15% and 14% of the Ukrainian tech talent pool respectively.
- Ukrainian software developers have been recognized by many rankings, including TopCoder and SkillValue by Pantalog.
Education
- More than 16,000 highly qualified IT professionals and additional 23,000 engineering specialists graduate every year with certificates in technical disciplines in Ukraine.
- There are around 450 educational institutions and many of them maintain IT related programs.
- Most developers have a good command of the English language. The number of IT developers with fluent English skills has increased to 47%, while 34% of respondents have an intermediate level. Learning English is encouraged by Ukrainian IT companies that have free English courses and speaking clubs.
- Ukraine has an impressive 99,8% literacy rate.
IT Industry
- According to PwC analysis, Ukraine is ranked 5th among Top 25 IT services exporters.
- The value of software outsourcing export in 2018 reached $4.5B and it is showing double-digit growth year after year.
- Ukraine is home to over 100 R&D subsidiaries of global companies from a variety of industries, including software, gaming, telecoms, and e-commerce. Companies such as Microsoft, Samsung Electronics, Apple, Wargaming, Boeing, Skype, eBay, Siemens, IBM have their R&D centers in Ukraine.
- The United States remains Ukraine’s largest partner for collective R&D activities (around 45% of the companies involved), followed by EU countries and Israel.
- Ukrainian IT market is full of creative ideas and boasts more than 2,000 startups.
- Such global tech companies as PetCube, Grammarly (tech unicorn), DepositPhotos, Jooble, Viewdle (bought by Google Inc. for about $45M), CleanMyMac have all started in Ukraine.
- Top 5 tech hubs in Ukraine include such cities as Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Odesa.
- Ukrainian IT companies organize numerous events such as IT Arena, IT Weekend, iForum, and many others. Lviv IT Arena 2019 became the largest Eastern European IT conference gathering over 4,000 participants from Ukraine, Germany, UK, USA, Romania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Hungary etc.
- Compared to its neighboring countries in Europe, Ukraine has the most moderate prices for IT services.
- Over the past years, Ukraine considerably simplified the taxation system of the IT industry.
Business environment
- Ukraine is on the list of top 10 emerging-market locations for offshore services according to Gartner.
- According to 2019 Tholons Top 50 Digital Nations ranking, Ukraine holds the 33rd place, which is 9 positions higher than in 2018.
- A.T. Kearney 2019 Global Services Location Index indicates that Ukrainian currency depreciation has led to a major gain in its compensation cost score, accompanied by an improvement in the competitiveness of its tax. Now Ukraine is 20th which is 22 positions higher compared to 2009.
- Only a 2–3 hour flight separates Ukraine from Germany, the UK, and other Western European countries. Ukraine has many 13 airports with over 100 connections to most European, Asian and US cities.
- Time zone in Ukraine is GMT+2, which is a great advantage for European clients. If your company is based in Europe, your business hours will be practically the same as the working hours of your remote team in Ukraine.
- As a result of sustained progress, Ukraine’s Ease of Doing Business ranking improved by 5 positions compared to last year.
To sum up, IT outsourcing to Ukraine is a great choice, since the country boasts the fast-growing software development industry with lots of success-hungry developers. Attractive prices are accompanied with progressively improving quality of services and the professionalism of IT specialists. So, your business will enjoy many benefits if you decide to cooperate with a software development company based in Ukraine.
