Experts Corner
Liviu Dan DRAGAN, President of ANIS – Employers’ Association of the Software and Services Industry, speaks about the evolution of the Romanin IT industry in 2010 and opportunities for 2011.
Status of the market and industry
“Domestic technology market is still on the way to recovery from crisis: private sector customers are still very prudent with raising their IT budgets, even if this could increase productivity and efficiency. SMEs are visibley more prudent, while major buyers are exploring, together with their providers, alternative for generating growth of their projects and investments in technology. 
Public projects are, even more than in 2010, subject to budget cuts, and it is not likely that we see major improvements in that direction.
Concerning the typology of major buyers, it is not likely that 2011 bring significant changes amoung the industries; according to estimates, most acquisitions will be driven by the most prophitable industries: finance and banking, telecom, automotive, retail.
According to market perception, exports will probabily continue to be the main drive for the post-crisis recovery, and even for picking up the growth curve similar to pre-crisis years. Exports are still dominated by outsourcing, either custom software developement projects or captive R&D and support centers. Technology products still do not make up for more than 10% of the IT exports volume.
European funded projects can represent a more accessible way to increasing investment in company development – either own production capacities, employees traing and development programmes or investment in increasing comptetitivity. For our industry in particular, the access to grants for investment in technology can prove to be very beneficial for the stabilty and event slight growth of the domestic market.”
Technologies for the future
“The inovation speed in technology has accelarated over the last years, and demand for products associated with mobility of access and interaction modified visibly the structure of the global market.
In 2010 Gartner published numerous studies and surveys regarding the evolution of the gadgets market: mobile phones, smartphones, tablets etc. All these studies indicate a spectacular growth of demand for mobile devices, even during severe global downturn. In Q3 of 2010, compared to the same period in the previous year sales of mobile phones grew by 35%, smartphones sales almost doubled and tablets sales reached the unprecedented volume of 19.5 million units. According to Gartner, the uprising sales of tablets, especially Apple products, caused a drop of at least 10% in global PC sales.These gadgets become indispensable to active managers and are real work and business analysis platforms.
Mobility solutions – applications and hardware – that support mobility registred a significant growth in the last 2 years and there is strong indication that the demand on that are will continue to increase.”
Labor market evolution
“After an accelerated development of the industry, accompanied by what we can call a „human ressources crisis” until 2008, 2009 and the first half of 2010 brought along acalmy on the IT labour market. In the second half of 2010 however we have seen strong signs of recovery for several big companies – increase of projects, both in number and in variety generated demand of human ressources and corresponding recruitment activies. Already in 2011, companies have announced opening for several position, significantly more than in the sam period of last year. According to companies’ estimates, recovery from crisis will increase demand for qualified specialists and this will impose a calibration of the labor market – through professional conversion programmes and external recruitment as a current practice.”