Second conference from Tuesday night gathered some important Romanian software representatives. People talked about outsourcing as a short term strategy bringing good money and yet permitting specialization and getting knowledge and expertise in several verticals.

Several strategies were enummerated, ranging from IP Devel's one on focusing on niche segments by opening offices in the target markets to Kaleidotek's acquisition of a local company for establishing a Belgian presence. I pretty much liked Radu Georgescu's position (from Gecad - the man of 2003 for the deal with Microsoft) in comparing Romania and India in terms of programmers' ability, and arguing that India is not a model Romanian firms should follow in the outsourcing case. "Romanians are better in terms of not only being faster but also being more inventive. We [Romanians] write better code, have lots of great ideas and our only chance is capitalizing on them. India is more like a tax heaven (which is very true compared to the Romanian burdened fiscal policy) with a good management and a better governmental approach."

As soon as you open up an IT firm in India - be it a one-person one located in an apartment, you get 0 (ZERO) tax for export. I will post soon more details about what paying taxes means to Romanian SMEs. Also, Indians are cheaper (according to Radu a programmer can be paid as low as $50 per month) and they have the industrial clusters mostly in the IT field (aka technological parks) but not only that allowed the knowledge spillover from the multinationals outsourcing their operations in there.