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Excerpt from infoDev's report "International Good Practices for the Establishment of Sustainable IT Parks."

For much of the 20th Century, Russia's IT industry had limited penetration, but in the 1990s, global players such as Motorola and Sun Microsystems established R&D sectors in Russia to leverage the expertise and skill base of the elite Russian universities and government programs.

Although Russian growth in this decade has been primarily fueled by its energy and trading sectors, the IT sector has shown significant growth and contributed USD$11.35 billion to GDP in 2005 (1.5%). The industry is primarily hardware-based, though IT enabled services and software also play a significant role.

Given Russia's size, technical infrastructure is not evenly distributed. Instead, the government has supported a number of Techno Parks to spur research and development related to high-tech industries. However, the Techno Parks have been focused on the IT sector in particular, preferring to use IT as a tool instead of an end product or service. This may be changing, though, as the Russian government has plans to develop new parks specifically focused on IT.

This country case study provides detailed operational information on Russian IT parks as well as policies that will assist the development of successful IT parks.