IT Opportunities in Armenia

Armenia, a small country with rare natural resources, has always been known for its highly educated labor force and, therefore, boundless intersectoral Information Technology opportunities. Highly educated human capital is an uncompromising precondition for further intersectoral IT development in the region. Recent increase in number of IT companies indicates that there is a huge potential for IT advancement and expansion of market share through creating software applications for hospitals, federal and local governments, universities and other organizations.

Health care and education sectors, federal and local governments are the potential areas requiring IT modernization. This translates into large projects for IT services in terms of duration and value. The market forces and favorable IT environment have boosted the number of companies to increase by 35 newly established subsidiaries or local companies over the last four to five years. Local companies with low cost margins have comparateive advantage over foreign competitors in the Armenian market. Although companies are competing for employees, there are a number of very qualified and still unemployed software engineers.

Armenia has a relatively higher number of software engineers compared with other countries having an IT focus. Each year several schools, specialized in software programming, produce skilled engineers. Graduates have knowledge and expertise to meet the western standards prevalent in Armenia.

One of the momentous aspects is that the neighboring countries of Armenia are not IT application producers, and have fewer educated programmers than Armenia does. Utilizing such a comparative advantage over its neighbors, Armenia will have a good opportunity to obtain a dominant role in the region to export its software products.