4 proven reasons to develop your software in Poland

Business owners had got themselves into a hole and it can be difficult to get out of it. On the one hand, they see software as the key component to future success. On the other hand, they suffer from a lack of Developers and key IT competencies that can help to win the market. The demand for high-skilled Developers increases every year and makes them the most desirable employees on the market. However, it’s not easy to find in your own backyard the right team of people with right technology set and fair price for your business pocket. Sounds familiar? That’s why I encourage you to develop your software in Poland.

Fast growing technology sector

The last several years were very successful for the Polish IT industry. Poland has become one of the major IT solutions providers partly due to the increasing popularity of outsourcing. Business owners have started to look for new solutions to the global market. That’s why they often choose Poland where the economic crisis of 2008 didn’t cause havoc in software development.

With more than 60 000 IT companies, over 140 000 specialized IT employees Poland share 1,7% of the global IT services. Most companies in Poland are small companies. They take advantage of all local resources such as large intellectual assets, great technology background, hardware or network infrastructure. A large piece of cake for small IT companies are software houses and startups. The founders are young entrepreneurs with strong experience and innovative ideas. There are about 300 software houses with HQ in Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Warszawa, Gdańsk and other polish cities.

The video was published 4 years ago. In the meantime, a lot has changed in terms of polish IT industry but one thing hasn’t. Poland is still the best place to locate R&D centres and startups related to software development. You can participate here in one of the best IT conferences in Europe.

High-skilled developers

The biggest advantage of the Polish IT sector is a huge intellectual potential. It could be difficult to provide high-quality services without the right team of well-educated, experienced and able to problem-solving people. With 18 technology universities and more than 15 000 new tech specialists annually Poland is at the forefront in terms of educating the best IT professionals. Computer Science, Geoinformatics, ICT and Applied Computer Science are the most popular fields of study in 2016/2017. Furthermore, polish students have won many international programming competitions, both individual and team competitions in the last years.

In August 2016 HackerRank published the results of a survey about the quality of programmers around the world. Poland was on the 3rd place of countries surveyed right after Russia and China. In details, polish programmers were 1st in terms of using Java skills, 2nd in Algorithms, 2nd in Python and 5th in Ruby.

Over the last few decades, Russian was the second language of choice in Poland. It was connected with historical influences. Nowadays Russian is still in use but not to the same extent. It has been replaced by English and German. Almost all specialists (98%) hired in companies providing IT services use English every day. More than half (58%) is fluent in German. Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish or Norwegian are the next languages on the list which become popular and used for better, direct communication with the client and to improve language skills so far. In this case, the Poles are very flexible.

International IT services

More than 140 000 people work in IT companies that provide IT solutions in Poland. One-third of these companies are owned by polish entrepreneurs. They’re focused on conducting IT projects for health, finance, telecommunications and automotive sector. Business owners are more willing to hire an entire development team when it comes to IT project implementation. This affects faster project delivering and makes it less complex. Experience of each team member and the team, in general, is crucial here. It helps to achieve rewarding results for product development. Also, the game industry is becoming more and more popular. That results eg. in the creation of The Witcher by CD Projekt RED.

The value of Polish IT services market grew by 4.2% in 2015. According to the analysis, the Polish IT services market will grow by 4.1% by the end of 2016. In 2017 will grow by a record of 5.5%. The biggest part of that pie is software services conducted for foreign businesses.

„Poland has all elements needed for success. It’s one of the reasons why we also want to invest here.” – Zeev Holtzman, a chairman and founder of Giza Venture Capital

Polish IT market is characterized by a wide variety of services for foreign clients. Software houses and tech companies deliver a complex service includes: prototyping, designing, development and deployment. This applies to the web, mobile and IoT solutions. That kind of solutions is delivered to external clients from many regions in the world. Mainly to businesses in North America, Western Europe, Central and Northern Europe. Those kinds of cooperations base on required quality and the fair prices for the business pocket.

High-ranked over the years

Poland is appreciated in many rankings and listings. Probably by its large and skilled talent pool. Poland has also comparatively low cost of doing business. In comparison to other EU member countries the costs are more attractive by 15-35%. Another advantage is its geographical proximity to Western and Northern European markets. Nearshoring has become the main direction for providing software services. Poland has established itself as one of the European most promising outsourcing locations. It has its reflection in Tholons rankings.

Poland has become a regional leader in outsourcing IT services. Just see how big moves were made by Warsaw and Wroclaw in the last 3 years. The cities are amongst the Tholons Top 100 biggest movers. Meanwhile, Kraków is well situated as the 1st town in Europe and 9th in the world concerning attractiveness of outsourcing services.

Promising location, attractive costs, well-skilled labour and high technological advancement. In this way, Poland brings a breath of fresh air for European IT service markets. In this way, Poland has become an attractive place for business software development.