17-th Annual Survey of the Software Development Industry of Russia

Dear Colleagues!

Dear friends!

We bring to your attention the results of the traditional research of the software development industry in Russia, which has been carried out by RUSSOFT annually since 2004.

In 2020 the study was heavily impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. We were unable to conduct a full-fledged survey in February-March, so we had to conduct an additional round of company surveys in May-June 2020. As a result, we managed to obtain twice less questionnaires than previous years. Therefore, in order to be accurate, in addition to the traditional survey in the midst of the pandemic RUSSOFT analysts twice conducted express polls of industry players on topical issues in the life of companies. The data obtained during this difficult period have also been used in this report. In addition, the results of studying various sources of information were traditionally included into the report as well as expert assessments which had been obtained from top managers of software development companies.

The results of 2019 are important primarily in order to understand how the industry has changed in the challenging 2020. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the previous year was extremely successful for the Russian software development industry. It was marked by a significant increase in sales of the software industry both in the global and in the Russian IT market. An important factor that influenced the growth of the domestic market was the real digital transformation that the Russian economy is going through.

The deepening geopolitical confrontation between Russia and the United States led to a decrease in the share of the US and EU markets in the total volume of software and software development services exports from Russia. But this happened not due to a decrease in sales growth in developed markets, but due to an increase in exports in emerging markets, where Russia was able to provide governments and business communities with alternative security solutions, de facto offering these countries “Digital Sovereignty”.

Unfortunately, due to the sale to foreign owners of a number of large Russian companies in 2018­2019, we were forced to exclude their turnover from the calculation of the export volumes of the Russian industry. In this regard, the total indicators of the industry have decreased. As a result, the volume of foreign sales of software and of software development services from Russia amounted to $8.25 billion (instead of predicted $11 billion). Thus the total volume of sales in Russia and abroad amounted to P1.12 trillion (in dollars — $17.34 billion). The growth of all indicators exceeded 17%.

Russian service companies continued to maintain their positions in the ranking of the 100 leading service companies in the world (according to IAOP). Strengthening of Russian software vendors’ positions in the Gartner “magic quadrants” continued, especially it is to notice the success of our companies in the field of information security (7 companies are already included in the rating of the world’s best suppliers of information security software).

Taking this opportunity, I would like to express my profound gratitude to our experts who greatly helped to edit the questionnaire and to formulate trends, ensuring that the changes in the global situation in the IT industry have been taken into account:

• Andrew Terekhov (professor of St.-Petersburg State University, President of Lanit-Tercom),
• Alexander Kalinin (CEO of SibEDGE),
• Maxim Semenkin (President of the Association SECON, CEO of Codeinside),
• Alexander Belokrylov (CEO of BellSoft),
• Vyacheslav Ananyev (member of the Board of Directors of the SibAcademSoft Association, CEO of Data East),
• Irina Travina (Chairman of the Board of Directors of the SibAcademSoft Association, CEO of SoftLab-NSK).

And as always, the most sincere words of gratitude to our chief analyst Dmitry Zhelvitsky for the tremendous work in collecting information, preparing the report and rating the leading companies in the industry and leading universities.

We are very grateful to Information & Computer Technologies Industry Association (AP KIT) and to our sponsors for many years of support to the study.

And many thanks to all those who participated in the survey and provided information and their views for the study.

President of RUSSOFT Association Valentin Makarov