Infopark In Brief 2008/2009

Presidential Edict (#234 May, 2001) – stipulated conditions for the development of the Belarusian SE industry and laid the foundation of the state policy in this field. December 7th 2001 – the Scientific-Technological Association "Infopark“ was registered to become a major instrument of such policy. For the first time ever in Belarus there was made a real step towards consolidation of the scientific and production potential of the ICT sphere in Belarus and national private business’ resources and capabilities. Genesis

Dynamics Membership – from 8 IT companies in 2001 to 60+ in specialists, of them – SE experts.

Market Structure (May, 2008)

Export Shares According to prognosis assessments, the key export markets for Belarusian IT companies will be: Russia – 18.84% of the market USA and Canada – 18.84% Other western countries – 24.19% Germany – 14.75% Scandinavia – 7.25% South-Eastern Asia – 3.28% Ukraine – 1.45 % Other former USSR countries – 2.90%.

Hand in Hand Infopark actively develops all possible types of cooperation with the following national state bodies: -National Assembly’s House of Representatives commissions -Ministry of Communications and Informatization -Ministry of Education -National Bank

Park to Park In Infopark took part in the activity of the work group aimed at making up a national state project “High- Technologies Park”. Joint work revealed that Infopark’s experience might be useful at the initial stage of the High- Tech Park’s development. At present Infopark and High- Technologies Park are fruitfully collaborating in the field of the national software development and jointly accomplishing a number of IT-oriented national and international projects (such as KOMPIS, IT-education and the like). More then that – a number of Infopark member companies have become HTP residents.

CEE Cases Although the rate of Belarus mentioning in the international IT mass-media is generally quite low, there is a number of Infopark member companies, that have become world renowned for their high level of professional expertise. These are two major software developers: IBA Group and Epam Systems. They can frequently be found in various ratings and expert surveys. In 2008 they joined TOP-100 world’s leading IT service providers (according to Global Services Magazine and NeoIT, and International Association of Outsourcing Professionals). It should be mentioned here, that being national companies by their origin, they remain truly transnational companies with offices all over the world.

International Involvement In order to promote technical and investment opportunities and achievements of the Belarusian software industry abroad, Infopark repeatedly took part in the major international and regional IT exhibitions such as CeBIT and Infobalt. Among the global events organized immediately by Infopark there is a Banking Information Technologies Forum “BankIT” and an International IPR Conference “Software Applications as Intellectual Property Objects”. Such events have found a wide positive response among IT professionals, and we plan to hold them on an annual basis.

Multivector Cooperation Infopark has always been actively involved with developing international cooperation network. It has eventually lead to Infopark’s transformation from national SE structure into CEE SE cluster. We believe that CEE region might rightfully compete with the leading IT locations of the world like India, China, Ireland and the like. We see the following types of cooperation models here: -Merges and acquisitions -Joint Ventures -Alliances -Clusters

Multivector Cooperation II However, we will never achieve any solid results in the field of international cooperation, if we neglect the legal basis for various types of cooperation activities. Here we suggest the following documents to form the legal framework of our cooperation: -Cooperation Agreements -EU funding (FP7, cross-boarder cooperation) programs documents - International Councils of Business Cooperation Statutes

Cooperation Opportunities The peculiarities of the European and, specifically, the Belarusian IT markets still have to be thoroughly examined. IT sphere as such is quite versatile, and it is always possible to find “free niches” of cooperation. Therefore, we believe that active involvement into cooperational processes will allow our member companies to discover such niches for the benefit of their own businesses and European IT industry development in general.

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