Belarus Is Emerging as the Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe

“It’s a relatively cheap place to develop,” said Piotr Iwanicki, game director at Superhot Team, a Polish company that has developed a first-person shooter videogame called “Superhot.” “It is a perfect place to develop games.”

The nation of 9.5 million people sandwiched between Russia and Poland has a well-educated population and relatively low labor costs. And it has become one of the largest and most established information technology outsourcing providers in Europe. In 2015 exports from Belarus’s main IT hub totaled $705.6 million.

Industry insiders credit the country’s Hi-Tech Park, a 123.5-acre haven for IT companies in eastern Minsk, the capital, for helping pave the way with tax breaks and a vibrant ecosystem. They say the Hi-Tech Park has created an environment that fosters innovation, despite the government’s reputation for tolerating little dissent . 

A number of Belarusian IT companies are included in the Software Magazine's 'Software 500' ranking of the world’s largest software and service providers and are recognized by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) as The Global Outsourcing 100 companies.

The reason for the success of the Belarusian IT industry is its highly skilled experts educated at local universities. Every year, 54 universities produce 4,000 software engineers. Belarus has well–established higher educational institutions and old traditions of science and engineering education that are sufficient to train qualified programmers. The Belarusian educational system stands out because of its focus on fundamentals, science, and logical thinking, giving our graduates the ability to develop creative solutions. Belarusian students are famous for winning medals at international programming competitions and championships, including ACM ICPC.

A typical Belarusian IT service provider is a small dedicated team of around 100 employees. However, there are large–scale enterprises that employ several hundred people, such as IBA Group (more than 2,500 employees), EPAM Systems, and Itransition. As the local IT market is developed insufficiently, Belarusian companies mainly aim at Western customers' orders, the local clients being state institutions, financial enterprises, banks, and corporate customers. Approximately 90 percent of the Belarusian IT companies are involved in custom software development and IT consulting for a wide range of foreign clients.

Belarusian IT companies are committed to providing high quality services and solutions and seek to comply with the latest international standards. In October 2003, the two largest Belarusian enterprises, IBA Group and EPAM Systems, were the first in Europe to achieve the SEI CMMI® (Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model Integration) Level 4 Rating. IBA Group was the first IT company in Belarus to certify its labor safety management systems to the international standard OHSAS 18001 and its information security management system to the requirements of ISO/IEC 27001 standard.

The Belarusian IT industry is generally engaged in custom development and high–end software services for clients that require low cost but highly skilled technology resources. Belarusian companies offer the same core development languages, platforms and technologies as their counterparts in other countries. In addition, our engineers and developers are known for their accuracy and have a reputation for being creative and able to solve complex problems.

Belarus is run by a former collective-farm manager and is known for manufacturing tractors. Now, the former Soviet republic wants to be known as the Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe.

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