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NewswireTODAY - /newswire/ -
St. Petersburg, Russia, 2010/05/21 - Arcady Khotin, the founder of Arcadia, has left the position of the General Director which he was holding since the foundation of the company 17 years ago. The new General Director appointed is Sergei Baklan, former Executive Director of the company.
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Arcady Khotin, as the main shareholder, is going to take part in the strategic management of the company. In fact, this is just a formal registration of the changes which came up gradually through the long history of growth. “When we started Arcadia, it was a small family business,” commented Arcady Khotin. “We had a home office, 5 employees and one client. After 17 years everything is different — 160 employees, a spacious office in a business center, a turnover of millions of dollars and a lot of clients and projects. The daily management of such team requires a lot of energy and time. Still, I’m more of an entrepreneur than of a professional manager. I prefer networking, looking for new markets and partnerships. Business process management and relationships with clients should be done by professionals.”
It’s Sergei Baklan who became such professional manager. He came to Arcadia in 1998 and took the position of Executive Director. Before Arcadia, he worked in large Russian and international corporations and was responsible for certification and IT-management. Custom software development requires strict confidentiality, data security, effective collaboration process and quality management, while the price of errors can be extremely high. Under Baklan’s guidance, ZAO Arcadia went through ISO 9001:2000 certification in 2003; became a Microsoft Certified Partner in 2005 (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner since 2007) and confirmed this status every year. The stable growth and positive feedback from Arcadia’s clients show that Arcadia’s top-management copes well with all the challenges, while mistakes turn into invaluable experience for future work.
Sergei Baklan commented on his promotion: “We are going to keep on growing in the existing model, looking for new clients and new employees. Of course, now it’s much more difficult, but our results in 2009 are rather good. Our turnover amounted to $ 6.2 mln, which is 16 % more than in 2008. Now we are going to search actively for new clients with focus, as usual, on Northern Europe, where we already have major clients and a long track of successful co-operation.
Indeed, 2009 was uneasy time for Russian software development industry. At the recent press-club meeting of RUSSOFT (Association of the most technically competent software developing companies from Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine; Arcadia is a member of the RUSSOFT) it was stated that the aggregate revenue of Russian software exporters and service providers in 2009 stayed at the same level as in 2008 — $ 2,65 bln. Previously, this indicator showed annual growth of 20-25 %. Principals of Russian software developers explained that in many cases the cause for stagnating or even falling sales was reduction of orders from Russia. Thus, Arcadia’s strategy — working with European and US customers — in this situation proved to be a good choice and allowed to keep positive growth.
About Arcadia, ZAO
Arcadia (arcadia.spb.ru) is one of the oldest Russian software houses focused on providing high quality software development and consulting services to clients in Northern Europe and US. Through it's long history, Arcadia became a stable medium-sized company. Now Arcadia is a team of 160+ software professionals with 17 years' experience in developing complicated outsourcing projects. Our great track record, excellent location and access to human resources of St. Petersburg (one of the top global R&D/engineering outsourcing centers and the second largest city in Russia) make our position very reliable and allow us to provide top quality services. That is proved by long-term relationships with our main clients — medium-sized companies and large international corporations.
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public.relations[.]arcadia.spb.ru 
