“Eight million Romanians use the Internet now, and 80% of them use it daily. I believe companies do no yet realize the tremendous business potential the Internet provides,” said Dan Bulucea, chief executive officer of Google Romania on Tuesday.
Under the circumstances, Bulucea said there were 20,000 Romanian websites getting money from Google via the Adsense program, a system whereby websites host ads served by Google and are paid for the number of clicks from the money Google collects from advertisers.
Florin Talpes, founder and chairman of BitDefender, started the conference with an optimistic message: “Few people know that any young computer science graduate may be earning as much as EUR1000 per month in net amount in one year after graduation. IT companies absorb everything that comes out of the faculties in this field in Romania.” He added development in IT&C by outsourcing and development by companies creating their own products were two different things.
“Ten years ago we were wondering whether Romania could become some sort of India of Eastern Europe in terms outsourcing. I think this is a trap because we cannot compare to India, which has 20 times more IT graduates per year than we do. We need to stimulate development of software products,” the Softwin official said.
When asked what Romania needed to do to become a software developer factory, Talpes said exact science education was vital.
He added that Romania had an IT&C development strategy in the sixties and seventies, which it did apply, unlike today, when there are very many of strategies, but only on paper.
Irina Socol, Siveco CEO, says that judging from her company’s experience on international markets, investment in education is the key to growth.
“We were surprised to see that the educational investment on Arab markets is measured in two digits of the GDP.”
Siveco has provided educational software to countries in the Middle East and Africa over the last few years.
Mihai Tudor, CEO of IBM South-Eastern Europe says Romania continues to remain attractive to investors. IBM is in talks over two of its major projects, one of which in Targu Mures (north-central Romania).
The first part of ZF Digital ’11 was held at the Marriott Hotel in Bucharest on Tuesday. The second part is scheduled for Wednesday, with a different set of ten executives and entrepreneurs in the IT&C business as speakers. The conference is organized in partnership with NEC, Samsung, Banca Transilvania, Deloitte and Lenovo.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)