Software Market In Iran – Part 2
Sanctions
Economic sanctions has prevented large scale companies and products to be present in Iran’s software market. But smaller companies pass it like mice that pass a wall by its cavities. In other hand Software is not such an industry that works using huge and complex manufactures. Software development just needs human and knowledge and not more. Moreover most of scientific fields have their own opensource products that consists a lot of implemented knowledge within procedures and behaviors. Indeed, economic sanctions just specialized software industry of Iranian engineers rather restrict them at all. Internet basically designed to makes available knowledge and break censorship. It seems Software is not a kind of restrict-able knowledges. Iranian software development teams favor Microsoft .Net and Php for general purposes applications.
Operating System
MS-Windows has captured Iranian operating system market for many years. Microsoft Windows keeps its share market but something starts to change. These are some years that Linux flavors are getting popular between Iranian software developers. So here are many local products on the shelf that uses Linux flavors as platform. Even Iranian universities developed an Iranian version of Linux. New edition of rich client Linux such as Ubuntu are getting their community between Iranian software professionals. Moreover, Linux already has captured most of networking servers market share. All ISP’s prefer to use Linux or Free BSD server rather than Windows. Windows has home using market yet, but I think it is changing. Unauthorized Apple resellers sell latest Apple’s products more than ever. iPhone and MacBook Pro are the most popular electronic products between Iranian youth.
In Minicomputer and Mainframe industries Sun and IBM products are more popular for Iranians. IBM is trust-able and Iranian companies accept to pay twice or more times of price of a IBM Z series mainframe for high transactional businesses. There are some difficulties for spare parts and technical references. But noting is impossible here.
Software Development
We reviewed in past part that Copyright doesn’t support for software products in Iran. So Iranian students almost never pay for any software during getting familiar with software platforms. Cracked software are available always. You don’t have to pay for them. Even you like to pay, There are no authorized reseller. Even if you find a reseller he isn’t able to sell you because of economic sanctions. So you have to download and use softwares without any responsibility. In this case Microsoft, JBoss, IBM, Oracle products are more favorite. For example Oracle databases are using widely by large scale organizations. In many cases they prefer to buy from an authorized branch. The only Iranian branch of Oracle is not support by Oracle any more. So the Iranian Oracle administrator, will buy the enterprise edition by paying something less than 5$ and deploy it after some challenges. MS-SQLServer is the most favorite database in this market I think. Also MySQL gets famous by using in web-based projects. I also worked with DB2 in some cases. So In database business all databases are available. PHP, C#.Net and Java are the most popular technologies. .Net has thousands programmers. PHP has its market share and is getting larger day by day. J2SE and J2EE almost are available. Spring, JBoss and other frameworks are using widely. Indeed in enterprise area Java technology is the major one that follows COBOL legacy projects. In fact, J2EE using a vast of opensource technologies is the most favorite platform for Iranian companies who are working in enterprise level of the business such as Banking. Some companies has been accomplished their enterprise projects using Delphi or .Net, However now Java in enterprise level has no competitor. ERP solutions is a main competition advantage for large scale companies. But actually economic sanction has limited this market for western ERP companies. So Indian or Singaporean companies try this area more than European. Also some Iranian companies have tried to localize open source ERP solutions. Lack of technical reference and legal supports has effected ERP and specific industries more than general areas.
Integration
Following limitations and sanctions, software market has no a complete harmony between solutions and platforms. So integration is a rich market in Iran. I as a senior developer or consultant have worked in many integration projects. In fact integration is an inseparable part of large scale projects. In Iran a large scale software project implementation is just like somehow to completing a puzzle that you don’t have all pieces. The map is out of date. Moreover you have to use some pieces of other different puzzles to cover some areas of your puzzle with them. Some how there are missing pieces that you have to develop them. Finely you have to integrate them all. This is why I told that Iranian software market is something different.
Iranian Developer Teams, Working style
Following what I told, here you can find talented and solid developers who they know how to find the way. They almost have learned how to develop using minimum resources. They know how to integrate tools and products. They know how to dive into a unfamiliar technology. In this way they have a lot of, difficulties that even aren’t easy to imagine for other countries. Sun JDK’s, Source Forge, Oracle, Google Codes and many other libraries are closed to them. In other hand governmental restriction and filtering prevented Iranian students to search freely. At this time that I am writing this, WordPress and some other giant blogs are bocked to Iranians by some local rules and restrictions. Low speed internet connection is another problem. But, with all restrictions and problems the Iranian Software market keeps growing.
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