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Please note, this is NOT a sponsored post. Our website visitors often search information about large multinationals captive software development centers in eastern Europe. This case study is the first in the series.

Over the last 20 years, Hewlett-Packard has been providing technology solutions in Central and Eastern Europe and in Bulgaria, in particular. In January, 2006, HP outsourced its business processes and operations to the Sofia Global Delivery Centre, establishing itself as one of the most successful businesses operating directly in Bulgaria.

The Sofia Global Delivery Center’s main focus is to offer its European, Middle Eastern and African partners and clients high-value cost-effective IT and business remote services. More specifically, HP’s technical operation in Sofia delivers remote infrastructure management services, such as help desk, database management and operating system administration services. Over the 5 years since its opening, the Global Delivery Center has contributed to the establishing of HP as one of the leading business processes operations in Bulgaria.

In order to achieve this, there are several factors that made Bulgaria a suitable outsourcing and development destination. One the one hand, after Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union in 2007, the country began to invest heavily in the development of technology in its drive to move towards a fully-functioning information society. Market data from the International Data Corporation indicates the ever-increasing investment in Information and Computer Technology markets on behalf of the countries from Central and Eastern Europe.

The data also points out that CEE markets are currently one of the most dynamic in the world. Apart from the dynamics of the region, after its careful investigation of more than 14 countries, including Russia, Ukraine and Romania, HP chose to establish its operations in Sofia because of the cost and availability of the workforce in the region. For one thing, Bulgaria boasts a vast availability of talented, qualified and loyal IT professionals. For another, labour costs in the region are attractive and wages have significantly low growth rates. Furthermore, Bulgaria’s multilingual workforce contributes greatly to the Global Delivery Center since it aims at providing multilingual support to its customers. A third factor that pinpointed Bulgaria as an appealing outsourcing destination is the country’s cultural and geographical proximity.

HP also provides technological solutions for the country as a whole. Working together with Bulgarian government, HP installed a faster and more reliable IT infrastructure which processes national identity documents. Also then company offers professional development and education programmes. Currently, the company employs over 1200 high-level IT experts and sponsor several development programmes in close cooperation with major Bulgarian universities by providing specifically-designed courses taught in HP-sponsored labs. The Technical University of Sofia is currently affiliated with the Hewlett Packard International Institute of Technology.

All factors considered, by outsourcing its operations in Bulgaria, HP has developed a highly-profitable organic addition to its global services. What is more, through working closely with local clients, HP has shown that Sofia is a highly seductive outsourcing location for the IT sector.