St. PETERSBURG, Trying Harder
http://www.publications-etc.com/russia/business/articles/9904_1.html
Source: Russian Business and Trade connections , A monthly journal on business, trade and investment in Russia and the CIS
Copyright 1999, Image Alpha Limited. All Rights Reserved.
by Peter Gordon

Offshore

Another high-tech exporter is Arcadia, which supplies contract software development services. Arcadia was founded six years ago by Mr. Arkady Khotin--a long-time Russian software development and project manager--to take advantage of "the thousands of highly qualified computer scientists, engineers and programmer/analysts who would no longer be employed in the government, military or R&D sector".

Arcadia's services are marketed internationally by Planet Software, Inc., based in Florida. "The combined Planet/Arcadia management team," says Planet's Managing Director Philip Schwartz, "has focused all of its energies on building the most respected offshore software company in Russia ... The Russian labour pool now contains thousands of highly-educated developers who can make a better living writing offshore software than working at a government or university job."

Mr. Schwartz goes on to say that "the city of St. Petersburg is at the center of this technology and is rapidly becoming the 'Silicon Valley' of Russia."

Nevertheless, he says, "Planet Software Inc. is a 100% US business. Its legal, banking and accounting relationships are all in the United States." In the last six months, Arcadia has worked on projects involving various leading-edge software technologies, including groupware, compression algorithms for medical imaging, Java, e-commerce, audio and video for Windows and the Internet and industry applications.