Achievements of Individual Russian Companies in the World Ratings
A chapter from 10th Annual Survey of the Russian Software Export Industry
Sep 17, 2013
Many large Russian software vendors still do not aspire to appear in various ratings created by the globally authoritative analyst teams. The main reason is unwillingness to disclose their turnover and profit data so that it would not become widely known in their country. Besides, software vendors sometimes do not wish to demonstrate their Russian origin as they position themselves at the corresponding markets as local residents (in order to use the status of these countries’ national manufacturers). There are also some fears that the Russian affiliation may prevent from their successful operations in some foreign markets due to the politically prejudiced attitude towards Russia (mostly, in Europe and the USA).
Due to these reasons, the representation of Russian companies in a number of software vendor ratings is much lower than it can be expected in the present context. However, Russian vendors are gradually becoming more open, and their representation is growing even in those ratings for which the turnover data has to be disclosed.
The Russian service companies have a very different attitude towards the participation in the international ratings. Among the most well-known ratings, we can note two versions of the Top-100 world’s outsourcing providers: Global Services and IAOP (International Association of Outsourcing Professionals). In these ratings (which are mainly based on the quality of rendered services rather than on the company size) a significant number of companies represent Russia (only India and the USA have more companies in the ratings). Currently, the number of Russian software development service providers in the Global Services and IAOP ratings looks very close to the maximum extent possible, still it may be even more increased due to the progress in other Russian companies’ transparency and PR activity. Totally 10 Russian service providers have been included at least once in the Top-100 outsourcing companies according to Global Services and IAOP for last five years.
This year, the IAOP rating did not include such provider as MERA from Nizhny Novgorod, which decided not to participate in the 2012 rating in order to be included into a higher category ("global") next year. It would be also logical to see in this rating next year ICL-KME CS (based in Kazan) which is rapidly developing and has the staff number over 1200 people.
In recent years, the share of Russian companies in these ratings has kept at the level of 5-8%. We need to keep in mind that apart from the IT-service providers both ratings also include leading BPO service providers. Excluding such companies from the ratings above, the proportion of Russian IT-companies will be higher than 10%. And summing up all achievements of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian IT-service providers in these ratings, the total share of service companies from the Russian-speaking industry of the former USSR among the top world’s IT service providers will be over 15%.
The Global Services and IAOP analysts not only identify the global top-100 leading outsourcing companies but also define the best ones in various nominations, which allows for judging the most important strengths of the Russian software developers. The companies with their main development centers in Russia are considered to be among the leaders in the following areas: Product Engineering, Software/Hardware, Information and Communication Technology Services, Entertainment & Media, Automotive, Financial Services, Health Care, Government and Industry-Specific Services.
Global Services and IAOP separately determine the best service providers by figures that reflect their size (staff number, consolidated revenues, number of development centers). A few Russian companies are included into the corresponding additional ratings. They are also on the first positions among IT service providers from the Eastern and Central Europe (almost all largest East European companies are concentrated in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine).
Only Luxoft and EPAM Systems are noted by analysts as the "global" companies, but they are still considered to be medium-sized enterprises by the global standards. Although it is noted that they are growing very quickly. Another candidate for a place among the global providers is MERA. The growth of the company’ staff size to 2000 employees allows it to anticipate the achievement of this purpose following the results of 2013.
The 2012 Global Services 100
The last published rating of the top-100 outsourcing companies according to the Global Services appeared in the summer of 2012. The new version (following the results of 2012) was not ready by the time of this research report preparation. A year ago, the 2012 Global Services 100 list included 7 companies from Russia: Auriga, DataArt, EPAM Systems, First Line Software, Luxoft, MERA, and Reksoft.
In the Global Services 100 rating, there were five companies from Ukraine and Belarus as well: IBA Group, SaM Solutions, SoftServe, Intetics, and Itransition. All three countries are culturally and economically close, so we can quite reasonably mention the so-called "Russian-speaking community" of the IT-service providers. The strengths of the companies from these three States are approximately identical. First of all, they have high quality education in the field of physical and mathematical sciences, exclusive creativity of personnel and experience in performing complex projects.
The 2013 Global Outsourcing 100
The IAOP experts, among whom there are representatives of General Electric, Sprint, Thomson Reuters, WMS Gaming and of leading US business schools, selected the winners by a number of criteria, such as the turnover growth and the company staff size, the positive customers’ feedback, company’s top management experience, and others.
Like in 2012, IAOP included 6 companies representing Russia in the Top-100 in 2013. They are: Artezio, Auriga, EPAM Systems, First Line Software, Luxoft, Reksoft. Two years ago there were 5 such companies and three years ago there were only 3. According to experts, the increase in the number of companies in this rating confirms that Russian service providers successfully added understanding of market and their ability to do business to existing highest technological level of Russian engineers.
This year there is one more Russian company (MERA) among the best in one of the separate nominations of IAOP. Thus, 7 representatives of Russia were included into The 2013 Global Outsourcing 100. Telecontact may be considered as the eighth, but it was only noted as a "rising star" of Russia. Besides, this company is oriented towards the Russian market and to the market of the nearing countries – Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.
It is to note that there are less Russian companies in The Global Outsourcing 100 than in The Global Services 100. It is explained by the fact that IAOP covers with its rating a larger range of outsourcing application areas (including BPO sector, where Russian export companies are not represented abroad).
Except Russia, neighboring Ukraine and Belarus (with IBA Group, Intetics, Itransition, Oxagile, TEAM International, Miratech, as well as with SaM Solutions, Softjourn and SoftServe which were listed in separate nominations) are also represented in the IAOP global rating. Some of mentioned companies have their headquarters in other countries but their main development centers are located in Belarus or Ukraine.
PwC Global 100 Software Leaders
According to PwC, Kaspersky Lab with its turnover of $615 million took the 57th place in the top-100 software companies (following the results of 2011). This company takes the 12th place in the EMEA region and the second place in the emerging markets (Emerging Markets 100), being slightly behind the Brazilian TOTVS.
In the EMEA region, 1C was also included in the top-100 (it took the 30th place with the turnover of $360 million). In the Emerging Markets 100, there appeared three more Russian companies apart from Kaspersky Lab and 1C (8th place) – Dr. Web (42nd place, $38 million), ABBYY (51st place, $31 million), and Positive Technologies (68th place, $25 million).
Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA
According to Deloitte, among 500 most fast-growing high-technology companies in the EMEA region we can usually see companies that are not the largest software exporters. An exception is Kaspersky Lab, which a year ago took the 185th place by revenue growth indicator for the last 5 years. Many other Russian software exporters promptly increased their income for the last 5 years, but they did not try to enter the Deloitte rating.
In the last version of this rating, there are three Russian companies: ER-Telecom (136th place), Service Plus (239th place), and STEC.COM (462nd place).
Software 500
In the recent years, only two Russian software developers were present in this rating: following the results of 2011 Luxoft took the 188th place with the turnover of $206.2 million, and Artezio – the 462nd place. EPAM Systems, which also represents Russia (based on the location of its largest development centers there), took the 181st place in the Software 500.
This year, Luxoft and EPAM Systems improved their positions in the Software 500 rating (they occupied the 186th and the 160th place, respectively). Artezio slightly fell back (466th place). In addition to them, this year other Russian companies were also included in the rating: PROGNOZ (292nd place) and DataArt (403rd place).
FinTech 100
In 2010 and in 2011, only one Russian company (Luxoft) was included in the FinTech 100 (the rating of the global leading providers of technologies and services for the financial industry). This year it took the 68th place, and Diasoft appeared in this rating on the 88th place.
Magic Quadrants of Gartner
The Gartner Group analytical agency ratings are among the most prestigious ratings for software vendors. This agency year over year publishes so-called Magic Quadrants of Gartner, which include products and companies that are among the leaders in certain software segments. Since 2012, three new players were unexpectedly added to the Russian software leaders who are traditionally present in their "quadrants" (Kaspersky Lab, ABBYY and some others). These companies are PROGNOZ from Perm ( in the Business Intellegence), Diasoft (in the Core Banking Software), and InfoWatch (in the new Data Loss Prevention quadrant), both from Moscow.
In the Summer of 2013, Gartner included Kaspersky Lab in the "magic quadrant" which comprises global vendors of mobile device management solutions (Mobile Device Management - MDM).
Besides, according to Gartner experts, a small Moscow company IntelTech with their products in the field of Big Data analysis took the lead in the 2012 Cool Vendors list.
Other Achievements of Russian Software Developers
The European Outsourcing Association recognized Luxoft as the Outsourcing Company of 2011, and also gave it the IT Outsourcing Project of the Year award.
In 2013, Forbes business magazine put EPAM Systems at the 6th position among the most quickly growing American technological companies (the EPAM Systems headquarters is located in the USA).
Business Week called DataArt one of the best developing outsourcing companies in the world.
At the end of 2012, the Russian developer of speech technologies (Speech Technology Center) was first awarded with the Speech Industry Award, which are annually conferred to the main players of the global speech technology market for their achievements. Earlier, Speech Technology Center (STC) became the first Russian company to be honored with an award for their technological achievements by the Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC), one of the largest media North American holdings oriented towards the market of telecommunications and CRM.
According to the American INTERNET TELEPHONY periodical, VideoMost (video-conferencing tools produced by SPIRIT Group) became the Product of 2012. SPIRIT software products are integrated in various telecommunication devices and systems. Over 1 billion people in more than 100 countries use their software globally on a daily basis.
By Gartner estimates, Kaspersky Lab comes the third in the world in the consumer internet security space and the first in the US antivirus software retail market.
In April 2013, two Russian companies – Softkey and Next Media Group – were included in the top-100 innovative and technological Internet projects according to Red Herring, one of the largest media holdings.
In September 2012, a Russian company first appeared in the IDC Security & Vulnerability Management rating among the top-10 by revenue size. It was Positive Technologies, which occupied 2% of the segment of IT system vulnerability assessment software with the income from operation in this segment of over $16 million.
A team of developers (from a small city called Ulyanovsk) who developed Ecwid, a shop for social networks, forced out of Facebook its US competitor, Payvment. Payvment will transfer to Ecwid its user base - then Ecwid will become the absolute leader among the Facebook shop designers.
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Due to these reasons, the representation of Russian companies in a number of software vendor ratings is much lower than it can be expected in the present context. However, Russian vendors are gradually becoming more open, and their representation is growing even in those ratings for which the turnover data has to be disclosed.
The Russian service companies have a very different attitude towards the participation in the international ratings. Among the most well-known ratings, we can note two versions of the Top-100 world’s outsourcing providers: Global Services and IAOP (International Association of Outsourcing Professionals). In these ratings (which are mainly based on the quality of rendered services rather than on the company size) a significant number of companies represent Russia (only India and the USA have more companies in the ratings). Currently, the number of Russian software development service providers in the Global Services and IAOP ratings looks very close to the maximum extent possible, still it may be even more increased due to the progress in other Russian companies’ transparency and PR activity. Totally 10 Russian service providers have been included at least once in the Top-100 outsourcing companies according to Global Services and IAOP for last five years.
This year, the IAOP rating did not include such provider as MERA from Nizhny Novgorod, which decided not to participate in the 2012 rating in order to be included into a higher category ("global") next year. It would be also logical to see in this rating next year ICL-KME CS (based in Kazan) which is rapidly developing and has the staff number over 1200 people.
In recent years, the share of Russian companies in these ratings has kept at the level of 5-8%. We need to keep in mind that apart from the IT-service providers both ratings also include leading BPO service providers. Excluding such companies from the ratings above, the proportion of Russian IT-companies will be higher than 10%. And summing up all achievements of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian IT-service providers in these ratings, the total share of service companies from the Russian-speaking industry of the former USSR among the top world’s IT service providers will be over 15%.
The Global Services and IAOP analysts not only identify the global top-100 leading outsourcing companies but also define the best ones in various nominations, which allows for judging the most important strengths of the Russian software developers. The companies with their main development centers in Russia are considered to be among the leaders in the following areas: Product Engineering, Software/Hardware, Information and Communication Technology Services, Entertainment & Media, Automotive, Financial Services, Health Care, Government and Industry-Specific Services.
Global Services and IAOP separately determine the best service providers by figures that reflect their size (staff number, consolidated revenues, number of development centers). A few Russian companies are included into the corresponding additional ratings. They are also on the first positions among IT service providers from the Eastern and Central Europe (almost all largest East European companies are concentrated in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine).
Only Luxoft and EPAM Systems are noted by analysts as the "global" companies, but they are still considered to be medium-sized enterprises by the global standards. Although it is noted that they are growing very quickly. Another candidate for a place among the global providers is MERA. The growth of the company’ staff size to 2000 employees allows it to anticipate the achievement of this purpose following the results of 2013.
The 2012 Global Services 100
The last published rating of the top-100 outsourcing companies according to the Global Services appeared in the summer of 2012. The new version (following the results of 2012) was not ready by the time of this research report preparation. A year ago, the 2012 Global Services 100 list included 7 companies from Russia: Auriga, DataArt, EPAM Systems, First Line Software, Luxoft, MERA, and Reksoft.
In the Global Services 100 rating, there were five companies from Ukraine and Belarus as well: IBA Group, SaM Solutions, SoftServe, Intetics, and Itransition. All three countries are culturally and economically close, so we can quite reasonably mention the so-called "Russian-speaking community" of the IT-service providers. The strengths of the companies from these three States are approximately identical. First of all, they have high quality education in the field of physical and mathematical sciences, exclusive creativity of personnel and experience in performing complex projects.
The 2013 Global Outsourcing 100
The IAOP experts, among whom there are representatives of General Electric, Sprint, Thomson Reuters, WMS Gaming and of leading US business schools, selected the winners by a number of criteria, such as the turnover growth and the company staff size, the positive customers’ feedback, company’s top management experience, and others.
Like in 2012, IAOP included 6 companies representing Russia in the Top-100 in 2013. They are: Artezio, Auriga, EPAM Systems, First Line Software, Luxoft, Reksoft. Two years ago there were 5 such companies and three years ago there were only 3. According to experts, the increase in the number of companies in this rating confirms that Russian service providers successfully added understanding of market and their ability to do business to existing highest technological level of Russian engineers.
This year there is one more Russian company (MERA) among the best in one of the separate nominations of IAOP. Thus, 7 representatives of Russia were included into The 2013 Global Outsourcing 100. Telecontact may be considered as the eighth, but it was only noted as a "rising star" of Russia. Besides, this company is oriented towards the Russian market and to the market of the nearing countries – Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.
It is to note that there are less Russian companies in The Global Outsourcing 100 than in The Global Services 100. It is explained by the fact that IAOP covers with its rating a larger range of outsourcing application areas (including BPO sector, where Russian export companies are not represented abroad).
Except Russia, neighboring Ukraine and Belarus (with IBA Group, Intetics, Itransition, Oxagile, TEAM International, Miratech, as well as with SaM Solutions, Softjourn and SoftServe which were listed in separate nominations) are also represented in the IAOP global rating. Some of mentioned companies have their headquarters in other countries but their main development centers are located in Belarus or Ukraine.
| Nomination | Company name |
|---|---|
| Top ten | |
| Leaders in Revenue Growth | EPAM Systems |
| Rising Stars in Revenue Growth | First Line Software |
| Rising Stars in Employee Growth | Artezio, First Line Software |
| Rising Stars in No. of Centers Worldwide | Artezio |
| Leaders – Entertainment & Media | EPAM Systems, MERA |
| Rising Stars – Retail & Consumer Goods | Artezio |
| Rising Stars – Financial Services (Banking, Markets) | Artezio, Reksoft |
| Rising Stars – Health Care | Auriga |
| Rising Stars – Telecommunications | Reksoft |
| Rising Stars – Information/Comm. Technology Services | Reksoft, Artezio |
| Top twenty | |
| Leaders – Technology (Hardware & Software) | EPAM Systems, Luxoft |
| Leaders – Telecommunications | Luxoft |
| Rising Stars – Technology (Hardware & Software) | Auriga |
| Companies – Government (all levels) | First Line Software, Reksoft |
| Companies – Financial Services (Insurance) | Exigen Services |
| Leaders – Industry-Specific Services | Luxoft |
| Leaders – Information/Comm. Technology Services | EPAM Systems, Luxoft |
| Companies – Research & Development Services | Artezio, Auriga, First Line Software, Luxoft |
PwC Global 100 Software Leaders
According to PwC, Kaspersky Lab with its turnover of $615 million took the 57th place in the top-100 software companies (following the results of 2011). This company takes the 12th place in the EMEA region and the second place in the emerging markets (Emerging Markets 100), being slightly behind the Brazilian TOTVS.
In the EMEA region, 1C was also included in the top-100 (it took the 30th place with the turnover of $360 million). In the Emerging Markets 100, there appeared three more Russian companies apart from Kaspersky Lab and 1C (8th place) – Dr. Web (42nd place, $38 million), ABBYY (51st place, $31 million), and Positive Technologies (68th place, $25 million).
Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA
According to Deloitte, among 500 most fast-growing high-technology companies in the EMEA region we can usually see companies that are not the largest software exporters. An exception is Kaspersky Lab, which a year ago took the 185th place by revenue growth indicator for the last 5 years. Many other Russian software exporters promptly increased their income for the last 5 years, but they did not try to enter the Deloitte rating.
In the last version of this rating, there are three Russian companies: ER-Telecom (136th place), Service Plus (239th place), and STEC.COM (462nd place).
Software 500
In the recent years, only two Russian software developers were present in this rating: following the results of 2011 Luxoft took the 188th place with the turnover of $206.2 million, and Artezio – the 462nd place. EPAM Systems, which also represents Russia (based on the location of its largest development centers there), took the 181st place in the Software 500.
This year, Luxoft and EPAM Systems improved their positions in the Software 500 rating (they occupied the 186th and the 160th place, respectively). Artezio slightly fell back (466th place). In addition to them, this year other Russian companies were also included in the rating: PROGNOZ (292nd place) and DataArt (403rd place).
FinTech 100
In 2010 and in 2011, only one Russian company (Luxoft) was included in the FinTech 100 (the rating of the global leading providers of technologies and services for the financial industry). This year it took the 68th place, and Diasoft appeared in this rating on the 88th place.
Magic Quadrants of Gartner
The Gartner Group analytical agency ratings are among the most prestigious ratings for software vendors. This agency year over year publishes so-called Magic Quadrants of Gartner, which include products and companies that are among the leaders in certain software segments. Since 2012, three new players were unexpectedly added to the Russian software leaders who are traditionally present in their "quadrants" (Kaspersky Lab, ABBYY and some others). These companies are PROGNOZ from Perm ( in the Business Intellegence), Diasoft (in the Core Banking Software), and InfoWatch (in the new Data Loss Prevention quadrant), both from Moscow.
In the Summer of 2013, Gartner included Kaspersky Lab in the "magic quadrant" which comprises global vendors of mobile device management solutions (Mobile Device Management - MDM).
Besides, according to Gartner experts, a small Moscow company IntelTech with their products in the field of Big Data analysis took the lead in the 2012 Cool Vendors list.
Other Achievements of Russian Software Developers
The European Outsourcing Association recognized Luxoft as the Outsourcing Company of 2011, and also gave it the IT Outsourcing Project of the Year award.
In 2013, Forbes business magazine put EPAM Systems at the 6th position among the most quickly growing American technological companies (the EPAM Systems headquarters is located in the USA).
Business Week called DataArt one of the best developing outsourcing companies in the world.
At the end of 2012, the Russian developer of speech technologies (Speech Technology Center) was first awarded with the Speech Industry Award, which are annually conferred to the main players of the global speech technology market for their achievements. Earlier, Speech Technology Center (STC) became the first Russian company to be honored with an award for their technological achievements by the Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC), one of the largest media North American holdings oriented towards the market of telecommunications and CRM.
According to the American INTERNET TELEPHONY periodical, VideoMost (video-conferencing tools produced by SPIRIT Group) became the Product of 2012. SPIRIT software products are integrated in various telecommunication devices and systems. Over 1 billion people in more than 100 countries use their software globally on a daily basis.
By Gartner estimates, Kaspersky Lab comes the third in the world in the consumer internet security space and the first in the US antivirus software retail market.
In April 2013, two Russian companies – Softkey and Next Media Group – were included in the top-100 innovative and technological Internet projects according to Red Herring, one of the largest media holdings.
In September 2012, a Russian company first appeared in the IDC Security & Vulnerability Management rating among the top-10 by revenue size. It was Positive Technologies, which occupied 2% of the segment of IT system vulnerability assessment software with the income from operation in this segment of over $16 million.
A team of developers (from a small city called Ulyanovsk) who developed Ecwid, a shop for social networks, forced out of Facebook its US competitor, Payvment. Payvment will transfer to Ecwid its user base - then Ecwid will become the absolute leader among the Facebook shop designers.
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