HP: Romania opposite of Bulgaria in terms of public projects

“Romania is the largest country in the so-called region of emerging markets. I have seen very good growth in the past few years and, of course, we are now feeling the first signs of a rebound on the IT market. We do not see the same thing in other countries in the region, however. If we take Bulgaria as an example, even if the business with the state is going well, the dynamics in the private sector is the exact opposite of that in Romania. Comparing perspectives, Romania is a country in which we make massive investments,” HP’s Software Sales Manager for Emerging Markets, Helmut Bernhard, told Business Standard.

The official said that Romania must quickly overcome this period of political instability, to minimize the effects of this situation on the IT market. “I believe that the economic climate can change rather fast in the near future. In Romania, the level of public debt is still low, compared to other countries in the region, so, if we overcome this slight political crisis, we can see another leap of the economy and more success in the business environment,” Bernhard added.

The HP manager said that Romania has not yet lost its competitive edge which has so far led to the growth in the IT outsourcing segment. “Frankly, I see no difference compared to previous years. There is still demand and, from the evolution of HP’s business in Romania, I saw that there is still growth. We see a significant interest in cloud computing, software as service, and a level of demand at least similar to that in other countries in the region. I do not believe that Romania is losing ground,” Bernhard added. The official said that the local business intelligence market has a greater development potential, due to the large number of multinationals and big companies, compared to the regional average. “Utility companies and the banking segment have major projects, because lenders are always interested in knowing as much as possible about their clients. It is difficult to estimate how much a business intelligence solution costs. This starts at €300,000-500,000 and amounts to billions of euro, depending on the complexity of the project,” the HP manager indicated.

At the global level, Hewlett-Packard estimates a moderate increase in sales in the fiscal year ending in October 2010.