From now on, Internet users will be able to see beautiful photographs that serve as background for one of the most popular search engines, Bing.com, of the company Microsoft. This information could be ignored and left for specialist publications, were it not for the hand of… Ukraine or, to be more exact, its programmers. Pictures for Bill Gates’ search engine will be exported from the 500px photo service founded by the Ukrainian-born Oleg Gutsol and the Russian Yevgeny Chebotarev. “Our editors will be choosing the best 500px images, and top pictures will appear on Bing’s main page,” Gutsol said in the 500px company’s official blog.
Den has repeatedly written that IT-designs of Ukrainian specialists are more and more often catching the eye of big international companies with billions-dollar-worth turnovers. For example, in late 2012 Den named Yegor Anchishkin Person of the Year 2012. He sold the company Viewdle, which develops the technology of identifying people and objects with mobile devices, to the mammoth Google. And now a new victory.
According to Gutsol, the 500px-Microsoft partnership will not be confined to displaying archival photographs. “We are now working together to integrate 500px’s best content and photographers into separate parts of Bing.com,” the 500px boss noted. They promise to solve the problem of marketing in the next few months. But he did not say when these projects would be launched again, nor did he speak on the economic part of the agreements.
There has long been a pronounced tendency towards big international companies cooperating with Ukrainian specialists and making use of the products they make. Den has inquired some Ukrainian IT experts about the prospects of this field and the challenges they are facing.
“OUR MARKET IS BECOMING BETTER KNOWN AND MORE PROFITABLE”
Ivan PIETUKHOV, president, Adamant Company Group; vice-president for information technologies, Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs:
“In principle, [foreign entities] show interest in Ukrainian software-designing companies and electronic bases. It is a normal tendency. Ukraine still is a relatively young market which big foreign corporations are trying to capture. At the same time, it is not a mass-scale phenomenon. The tendency is that, staying in Ukraine, our programmers work for many world trends by means of outsourcing. Our market is becoming better known and more profitable. Ukraine is capturing, little by little, its positions. The point is that our people take a broader approach to their work than average programmers from other countries. For example, if Indian specialists learn to write a certain script or perform certain operations, they will never go very far from this. Instead, ours can work very well as testers, designers, and developers of sophisticated systems. They are more advanced, curious, and natural-minded. They want to know more and adapt more quickly to new conditions and technologies. So far, things in Ukraine’s IT field are running their expected course. Companies are growing and getting orders. At the same time, a lot of problems have come up on the part of the state, particularly about the incomes that outsourcers and freelancers draw. They levy taxes on us and have introduced a provision that the income drawn in dollars can only be cashed in hryvnias. In other words, 100 percent of hard currency is to be sold to banks.”
“MORE UKRAINIAN COMPANIES BEGAN TO TURN TO US”
Serhii MORIN, IT market expert:
“Our companies have always worked with foreigners. Last year Ukraine had the third largest number of freelancers and outsourcers after India and the Philippines. Foreign orders account for 80 percent of our market. It is quite a stable tendency. Moreover, more and more Ukrainian companies are turning to us. Earlier, the share of foreigners was about 85-90 percent. Yet we more and more feel the lack of the specialists who could execute all the orders. This problem has also been under discussion for a long time. Besides, university graduates progressively show a low quality of knowledge.”
