On March 1, IT Europa announced the winners of the European Software Excellence Awards 2012 in Berlin, Germany. IBA was selected the winner in the category Database Solution.

IBA Group entered the contest for the fourth time and won for the second year in a row. In 2011, the award was in the Relationship Management category.

We were pleased to be in the same company with world IT leaders. The recepients of awards in other categories were Oracle, Fujitsu, and other reputable companies.

See a video clip of the award presentation at http://youtu.be/gUrbwI5IcRQ
See winner list

On July 27, 2011, IBA Gomel, the second largest software development center of IBA Group, celebrated its 10th anniversary. Numerous guests gathered in the Belarus Railway Sports & Cultural Center to wish all the best to IBA Gomel management and employees.

Igor Khobnya, Director of IBA Gomel, opened the event, saying: “We are celebrating our anniversary with a big family. Today, they are all here – our employees, their families, our clients, and our partners. All of them together have been creating our company during these ten years.”

See video (Russian only)

Sergei Levteev, IBA Group President, went on to say: “We are all a unified team that works for the common cause to implement projects for our customers. That is why the today’s anniversary is not only a holiday for IBA Gomel. It is a holiday for all of us. I would like to congratulate you – us – on this anniversary and to wish your commander the same confidence that he had all these years and I am sure will have in the future, and to all of you, to your families health and prosperity.”

See video (Russian only)

Valentin Kazan, IBA Group Vice President, added: “In my view, to open a development center in Gomel was a great idea. It decorated the region, and made Gomel an interesting and attractive city for young people to work here, to get pleasure, to work with their families. We receive lots of positive references from customers and I see that there is a sort of competition between Gomel and Minsk teams, and Gomel never loses and in some cases performs even better than Minsk.”

See video (Russian only)

Matthias Karius, Supplier Relationship Manager at IBM Germany, recalled a project that was implemented for a Swiss customer. IBA Gomel was able to deploy a team of 50 people in a very short time. “Ten years? Looks like it was yesterday,” he said.

See video

Winners of the online Quiz (Викторина) received prizes.

Miss IBA was announced.

From February 17 to February 18, 2011 Karim Pedersen, Technical Editor of the Danish IT newspaper ComOn, visited IBA Minsk.

Karim was in Belarus for the first time in 2006. The visit resulted in a series of articles, including IT Giant in Belarus. This year, he came again to see what has changed and what is going on.

Karim concludes: ”The big lesson from my visit here is that we are very much the same and we are very much alike. We have the same dreams, we have the same aspirations and working hard is the way to get to that future”.

Karim shares his impressions in the video clip below:  

View also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sviFA6i1Irc

We look forward to a new series of articles about Belarus by Karim and to his future visits to IBA.

About Karim Pedersen

Karim Pedersen is the founder of the largest IT news website in Denmark, ComON.dk, writing about technology and telecommunications for readers in Denmark. Founded 14 years ago, ComON has grown through a range of partnerships with other Danish news media, and today the articles are syndicated to a number of other media, reaching a broad segment of the Danish population. ComON has also for four years published a print newspaper for IT managers and is closely linked with other properties at the publishing house, Mediaprovider, such as the monthly gadget magazine Gear and the photography magazine Zoom. Before starting ComON, Karim has published more than 30 books on IT in Danish and worked freelance as a software developer and web designer. Karim has travelled extensively, both in his professional and private life. Writing about IT outsourcing and globalization for ComON, he visited India, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Belarus, and Russia.

On February 11, 2011 IT Europa, a leading European IT publisher and market intelligence organization, announced the winners of the European IT Excellence Awards 2011 – the pan-European awards event for IT and Telecoms channels. The winners and finalists were honoured at a celebration dinner at The London Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square, London.

IBA Group became the winner in the category Relationship Management. Alexander Derkach, IBA Group representative, collected the prize.

See video:

See pictures also at http://www.iteawards.com/

IBA Group

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary

This blog usually explores opportunities in Eastern Europe, but given that it is the first month of 2011, it’s worth exploring some of the key trends taking place in the most mature European outsourcing market – the United Kingdom.

Outsourcing advisory firm Equaterra just published their key trends for the UK market in 2011, based on examining 650 outsourcing contracts with over 200 companies, worth around £14 billion. Given that so many UK contracts have been examined, it was possible for the Equaterra researchers to draw some conclusions about how Western European customers are behaving, and what they will want in 2011.

Trend 1: Economic conditions are still tough, forcing companies to consider more offshore outsourcing. Eighty-seven per cent of companies will continue offshoring at present or higher levels, but sixty-one per cent will increase offshoring.

Trend 2: Cost reduction continues to be the key driver for offshoring, but financial flexibility is becoming far more important – up fifteen per cent on the previous year.

Trend 3: Global sourcing of services is far more accepted – with over seventy-five per cent of all companies using outsourcing applying some kind of offshore delivery model.

Trend 4: Multisourcing is increasing – with large-scale single-supplier contracts usually linked to low satisfaction with the contract.

Lee Ayling, EquaTerra’s Managing Director, IT Advisory UK, commented: “As in previous years, the 2010 study provides deep insights into the changing dynamics of the UK outsourcing market. One of the many points of note is that outsourcing contracts which deliver cost savings alone do not lead to higher client satisfaction. But successfully delivering cost savings plus another driver, such as access to skills or time to market, does positively impact general satisfaction – highlighting that both end users and service providers should not focus on price alone before and during an outsourcing relationship.”

For the European supplier community, the message is clear, cost remains important, but flexibility is the key. If outsourcing can create more flexible service levels and improve cash flow through more flexible financial models then it will be regarded a success.

IBA Group

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary

The analyst firm Gartner has just published new research on the top locations for offshore services in 2010, based on their analysis of the past year watching the offshoring market. The top thirty countries for offshore services were rated according to 10 criteria that will help determine which locations are right for individual organisations. The 10 criteria were: language, government support, labour pool, infrastructure, educational system, cost, political and economic environment, cultural compatibility, global and legal maturity, and data and intellectual property security and privacy. The rating scale was “poor”, “fair”, “good”, “very good” and “excellent”.

So, with five possible scores across ten criteria the results are fairly comprehensive, and so it’s interesting to note that only fast-growing developing economies feature in the top thirty:

Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama and Peru.

Asia/Pacific: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA): Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Hungary, Mauritius, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Turkey and Ukraine.

Seven highly developed countries have moved out of the top thirty this year – Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore and Spain. Clearly these locations remain important as nearshoring destinations, but their value compared to other regions is fast declining.

Another interesting fact is that almost a third of all the top thirty countries in the Gartner list are from the Central and Eastern European region – demonstrating that this region is not only important as a nearshoring destination, but is also developing the expertise to sell services to the world.

Additional information is available in the report entitled “Gartner’s 30 Leading Locations for Offshore Services, 2010-2011”. The report is available on Gartner’s website at: http://www.gartner.com/resId=1491316.