Poland or Belarus: Which Country to Choose for Software Development?
Eastern Europe is one of the most stable and mature software outsourcing regions that offers top-notch software development talents and favorable conditions for doing business. The two Eastern European countries that can boast of their highly skilled software development specialists with years of hands-on working experience in the international software development market are Poland and Belarus.
Both Poland and Belarus provide reliable, high-quality IT services and many world-known IT companies have launched their branch offices and R&D centers there, entrusting their software development projects to Polish and Belarusian developers. In this article, we’ll have a closer look at the reasons why many businesses prefer outsourcing their application development and why they choose Poland and Belarus for that.
Why Outsource Software Development?
Many companies find IT outsourcing a viable option for building their digital solutions. Here are the key reasons why businesses prefer hiring outsourcing software development teams.
Cost optimization
Custom software development is a rather expensive activity. It requires a whole software development team with a diverse set of skills, expertise, and technologies. To cut down on their development costs many businesses outsource app development. This way, they avoid many expenses related to in-house team maintenance, including recruiting, training, benefits payment, and others.
Moreover, for the US and EU companies, it’s much cheaper to hire software development teams from the regions with lower rates, e.g. Poland and Belarus.
Speeding up software development
A well-selected team of IT experts can significantly accelerate the software development process. Customer companies don’t need to spend time on finding the necessary IT specialists as well as establishing and maintaining software development processes in the team. Instead, they receive a well-equipped team prepared to start with the development project at any time.
Top-notch IT skills
For IT outsourcing vendors to keep the competitive edge on the market and provide high-quality services, they need to constantly train their specialists and ensure that their work is aligned with international software development standards. For this, IT outsourcing vendors obtain various certificates recognized worldwide and apply their standards to all the structural divisions and employees in their companies.
Access to an extensive talent pool
The IT industry is experiencing a huge shortage of IT skills worldwide. Therefore, those companies who are urgently in need of software development specialists prefer to turn to outsourcing instead of putting their projects on a halt and spending time searching for the necessary employees.
Outsourcing IT vendors can quickly select and provide the best specialists with the right skills for in-house team augmentation or form full-cycle software development teams for instant project launch.
The Software Development Industry Comparison
Both Poland and Belarus have stably growing IT outsourcing markets. The two countries have established a reputation as reliable IT outsourcing destinations with extensive pools of highly-skilled software development specialists. Let’s have a closer look at the two countries.
Belarus
Belarusian IT sector is strictly divided into two categories: outsourcing companies which make 60.5% and product companies with 39.5%. The outsourcing vendors mostly operate on the international market, having clients from all over the world with 44% of them from the US and Canada, 49.1% are from Europe, and 4.1% are from Russian and other CIS countries. In 2019 the IT sector accounted for 6.2% of Belarusian’s GDP and by 2025 its share is projected to increase to 7.5%. Many Belarusian IT companies are residents of Belarusian Hi-Tech Park (HTP) launched in 2005. Most IT companies are concentrated in the capital of Belarus, Minsk. Currently, there are 1054 IT companies and 121 R&D foreign corporate centers that reside in HTP with over 71,000 development experts. The resident companies have considerable tax benefits which incentivize the business development in related to IT areas. These taxes include VAT, corporate profit tax, customs duty, and office duty. The taxes simplify the provision of Belarusian outsourcing services to other countries. 
In spite of the Covid-19 pandemics which hit the entire world, the Belarusian IT industry is continuing to develop, overcoming the obstacles. For example, Belarus has improved its positions in the Global Innovation Index 2021 by WIPO, moving up 2 positions from 62nd place. This has become possible due to improvement in the Knowledge and technology outputs, moving from the 46th to 37th position, Creative outputs, moving from 97th to 93rd position, ICT services exports, moving from 15th to 11th position, and ICT access, moving from 19th