Positive changes in social and economic life of Ukraine introduced new investment opportunities for the world outsourcing leaders. They serve as an additional incentive for development of cooperation with Ukraine.

On March 17 a press-conference dedicated to II Ukrainian Outsourcing Forum was held in Kiev. Forum will take place in November 2005. Speakers for the event were Sergey Kostyukov, director of PR2 marketing communication agency, and Victor Maznyuk, coordinator of Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative – an alliance of Ukrainian software developers. Main objective of the conference was to attract Ukrainian public attention to the outsourcing market.

A number of people involved in the sphere of software outsourcing services for foreign companies in Ukraine has overcome a certain critical mass, when this market should be developed rather than ignored. According to the results of IT offshore Ukraine '2003 research, conducted by Market Visio, the costs of software development services exported from Ukraine in 2003 and 2004 were $70 and $100 mln. respectively, while the prognosis for the year 2005 is $140-$150 mln. However, the conference participants noted, that the given market is not transparent and this research might have provided an overview of one third of the companies working in this area at best. Actually, the market capacity is much higher and there are 50-60 thousand people involved in this business, rather than 20 thousand noted in report.

Global outsourcing market potential is humongous. Nowadays, many countries demonstrate this, namely India, where due to proactive governmental support annual outsourcing services export is measured by tens of billions dollars. For efficient development of this sphere in Ukraine it is necessary to create a positive informational environment for western partners involvement and assist to local companies.

At the press-conference there were given examples of successful partnership of Ukrainian companies with Motorola, Philips, Siemens. But in order to have large companies and corporations come to Ukraine purposefully, utmost importance has the position of the state, driven at creation of positive investment climate and overall support of offshore outsourcing business.

• presentation of Ukrainian Offshore Outsourcing Services market
• attraction of potential investors and partners to Ukraine
• addressing the problems of development of Outsourcing IT industry -Coverage of advantages of Ukrainian Offshore Outsourcing business for foreign companies.
• organization of the meetings between Ukrainian and foreign companies
• provision of the possibility for the Forum participants to discuss the role and mission of the government in formation of Ukrainian outsourcing market.

For the Forum participation it is planned to invite western professionals, consultants, companies' and corporations' representatives, which will be able to unveil and cover the real potential of Ukraine in provision of offshore outsourcing services on the global market.

Yaroslav Kucherenko

ComputerWorld/Ukraine