(P) Dan Adrian Paraschiv, SoftServe: Romania’s paradox, the landscape for IT development, and war in Ukraine
Romania's IT market is one of the fastest-growing markets in Central and Eastern Europe and is a great driver for the country's development. Its impact is estimated at almost 6.2% of GDP (EUR 13.6 billion).
Romania's IT market is one of the fastest-growing markets in Central and Eastern Europe and is a great driver for the country's development. Its impact is estimated at almost 6.2% of GDP (EUR 13.6 billion).
Ranked in the top 20 countries with the best software developers globally, Romania hosts offices of many major tech players. Recently, a global IT company with Ukrainian roots, SoftServe, opened a delivery center in Bucharest. SoftServe is a long-term partner for such giants as IBM, Cisco, Panasonic, Cloudera, Henry Schein, Spillman Technologies, and many more. It has offices in Ukraine, the USA, Poland, Bulgaria, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, and now Romania.
Dan Adrian Paraschiv (in opening picture) joined the company in February as a Country Manager for Romania.
When you started 22 years ago, what did Romania's IT sector look like?
In the year of my graduation, there were 13,000 professionals and the revenue of the IT software industry was $250 million, compared with the 150,000 specialists we have now. Some of our local companies which started in small apartments are now truly global players, actually very similar to SoftServe’s evolution which was founded by two students 29 years ago.
What makes Romania such an attractive destination for tech companies?
IT skills, cultural affinity, language skills, and communication infrastructure are the main points. There is also a snowball effect as vendors and suppliers settled in, triggering confidence for large companies to come.
With this expertise and contribution to GDP, why does the public sector's digitalization level remain low?
There’s the paradox: we have many qualified IT engineers, but we are not scoring well on digitization compared with other countries. In the public sector, there is a lack of focus and expertise in regard to digitalization, this resulted in hit-or-miss implementations over the years. I hope changes triggered by the pandemic will generate ripple effects.
Are there any solutions to this paradox?
The private sector and NGOs can definitely share good practices, as we have seen locally with Geeks for Democracy and Code for Romania. SoftServe has a long tradition in this area. Our crowdsourcing platform Open Tech empowers associates to contribute time and knowledge to voluntarily develop digital solutions for the public sector, NGOs, and governmental institutions.
