SoftServe

SoftServe was founded in 1993 in Lviv, Ukraine. Started by two post-graduate students of Lviv Polytechnic,[11] it began as a software development company with headquarters in Lviv.[8] The company was initially supported by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Incubator Center and its first known client was General Electric.[12] The company opened its first office in the United States in 2000.[5] SoftServe was instrumental in building Microsoft Bird's Eye service in 2004.[5] 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.[5]

In 2006, SoftServe founded SoftServe University. It became the company's corporate training program for improving developers and retraining specialists.[13] 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.[14][13] In 2008, SoftServe also founded Lviv Business School at Ukrainian Catholic University.[15]

SoftServe opened its United States headquarters in Fort Myers, Florida in 2008 and began holding an annual conference.[16] By 2012, SoftServe was one of the largest IT outsourcing companies in Ukraine with 2,189 employees, third only to EPAM Systems and Luxoft.[17]

In 2014 SoftServe moved its United States headquarters from Florida to One Congress Plaza, in Austin, Texas[18] (The company had previously operated an office out of Austin since 2013 and officially moved its headquarters to One Congress Plaza in 2014.[19]) The same year SoftServe opened offices in London, Amsterdam, Sofia, Wroclaw, and Stockholm.[20] The same year its employee base climbed to 3,900 employees[16] Also in 2014, the company acquired Amsterdam-based tech services firm Initium Consulting Group BV.[21][22] (Founded in 2012 and served mainly healthcare and private equity industries.)[18] SoftServe also acquired European IT company UGE UkrGermanEnterprise GmbH.

In 2015 SoftServe opened a new European headquarters in Lviv, Ukraine.[23] 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.[24] The same year the company named Chris Baker as the new CEO, taking over the role from Co Founder Taras Kytsmey.

In January 2017, SoftServe acquired Wroclaw-based Coders Center, for between $1.5 million and $3 million.[25]

In September 2020, the company was targeted by a ransomware attack, in response SoftServe shut down many of their internal systems to try and stop the spread of the virus. SoftServe says there is no evidence that the virus spread to customers' systems, and most of SoftServes internal systems were back online in a few hours to a few days. The hack resulted in bits of unfinished customer source code, and other information being shared on the internet. The individual who claims to be behind the hack, 'Freedomf0x', also published fragmented personal information of about 200 individuals, but whether this information is linked to SoftServe employees is unclear.[26][27] The attack targeted the company by exploiting the Windows tool Rainmeter. In response to the breach SoftServe partnered with multiple cyber and data security firms, and instituted new security policies.[28]

SoftServe executives open new offices in Kharkiv