SoftServe was founded in 1993 in Lviv, Ukraine. Started by two post-graduate students of Lviv Polytechnic, it began as a software development company with headquarters in Lviv. The company was initially supported by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Incubator Center and its first known client was General Electric. The company opened its first office in the United States in 2000. SoftServe was instrumental in building Microsoft Bird's Eye service in 2004. It used the same concept that was later used by Google for its Google Street View. For its work on the project, SoftServe was invited to speak at Microsoft's annual conference where it was used as an example of business applications that could be built by technology corporations. In 2006, SoftServe founded SoftServe University. It became the company's corporate training program for improving developers and retraining specialists. Based in Ukraine, it also offers international IT Professional certificates to employees who complete the program. With the launch of SoftServe University, the company became the first to establish a corporate university in Ukraine. In 2008, SoftServe also founded Lviv Business School at Ukrainian Catholic University. SoftServe opened its United States headquarters in Fort Myers, Florida in 2008 and began holding an annual conference. By 2012, SoftServe was one of the largest IT outsourcing companies in Ukraine with 2,189 employees, third only to EPAM Systems and Luxoft. Its employee base climbed to 3,900 employees by 2014. SoftServe moved its United States headquarters from Florida to Austin, Texas in 2014. The company had previously operated an office out of Austin since 2013 and officially moved its headquarters to One Congress Plaza in 2014. The same year SoftServe opened offices or development centers in London, Amsterdam, Sofia, Wroclaw, and Stockholm. Also in 2014, the company acquired Amsterdam-based tech services firm Initium Consulting Group BV. The company was founded in 2012 and served mainly healthcare and private equity industries. SoftServe also acquired European IT company UGE UkrGermanEnterprise GmbH and opened a new European headquarters to Lviv, Ukraine. It also organized an event in San Francisco, California along with IT professionals from Ukraine and members of the Ukraine consulate to address concerns about the country's operations in light of the geo-political situation in Ukraine. In January 2017, SoftServe acquired Wroclaw-based Coders Center, for between $1.5 million and $3 million.
Products and services
SoftServe is a software application development company as well as consulting firm. Its services include software optimization, software as a service, cloud computing, mobile, UI/UX, analytics, and security. It provides its services mainly in the healthcare, retail, technology, and automotive markets. One of the "SoftServe Business System" divisions also releases its own products, which are specially designed for Ukraine in order to find new technological solutions in IT.
Awards and recognition
Since 2004, SoftServe has been a member of the Microsoft Partner Ecosystem and was a finalist for the global Microsoft Partner of the Year in both 2006 and 2007. The company was recognized for the same award in 2008 and 2009 in Eastern Europe. SoftServe has continued to receive recognition from Microsoft, including by Microsoft Ukraine in 2012 for Partner of the Year, for Innovation in Business Analytics. The company has won additional awards throughout the industries, including being named to the Global Outsourcing 100 list in 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015. In 2010 SoftServe was named as Ukraine's Best Employer by Hewitt Associates and in 2011 named as Best Employer in Eastern Europe. In 2019, SoftServe ranked seventh out of more than 130 Western European companies in the Clutch software development category.
