14-th Annual Survey of the Software Development Export Industry of Russia

Dear colleagues!
Dear friends!

Here you will find the results of the annual (and 14th!) survey of the software export industry in Russia, which has traditionally been carried out by the Noncommercial Partnership for Software Developers RUSSOFT (NP RUSSOFT). In February-April 2017 we surveyed over 150 companies on the market (this was a record for the entire period of surveying!) Additionally, we studied various sources of information, and received expert assessments from dozens of directors of software developer companies.

Last year was marked by the Russian economy moving from stagnation to growth, which was reflected in the increase of sales of Russian software companies not only abroad, but also on the domestic market. Another important factor was the election of Donald Trump as the US president, which led to a deepening in the geopolitical conflict between Russia and the USA, creating preconditions for strengthening the position of our industry in Europe and in countries of the developing world. At last, the mechanism of state support of hi-tech export was launched, in the form of the Russian export center. The first results were shown by our activity in third-world countries, where Russia proved capable of providing alternative solutions in the security sphere, de facto offering these countries “Digital sovereignty”.

The volume of foreign sales of software and developer services of Russian companies grew by 12% and reached $7.5 billion. At the same time, it must be admitted that for geopolitical reasons, it is becoming more difficult for our companies to sell software and developer services from Russia, and so the gap has increased between the total volume of foreign sales by Russian companies and the volume of sales by their Russian offices (which came to $4.8 billion).

Both service and product companies have strengthened their positions in world ratings. Eight service companies were included on the list of the 100 top service companies in the world (according to IAOP). Russian software manufacturers continued to strengthen their position in “Gartner magic quadrants”, and the success of our companies in the information security sphere should be particularly noted.

Unfortunately, further prospects for growth of export to the USA will not depend on companies themselves in many ways, but on the development of the geopolitical situation. But it is evident that there are prospects for growth in European countries, in Southeast Asia, in Latin America and the Arab world.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the company ToyOpinion for their efficient support of the study in gathering initial information, and the company PROMT for the excellent translation of the report into English. Thanks to our colleagues from Tomsk and Chelyabinsk for helping to gather information in their cities, which raised the number of questionnaires filled out to a record level, and made it possible to analyze the situation in the regions. And of course, my most sincere words of gratitude go to our analyst Dmitry Zhelvitsky for his enormous work on gathering additional information, for preparing the report, and for forming ratings of leading companies and universities.

We are very grateful to the Association of Computer and Information Technology Companies and our sponsors for support in carrying out the study.

I would also like to thank everyone who took part in the survey and provided information about their companies.

Yours sincerely,
President of RUSSOFT Association
Valentin Makarov