YEREVAN, DECEMBER 5, NOYAN TAPAN. The closure of Lycos Armenia - the Armenian subsidiary of Lycos Europe company, and the dismissal of 75 experts of Epygi Labs AM - the subsidiary of Epygi Labs company (US) are related to business organization rather than to the impact of the global economic crisis. The Executive Director of the Union of IT Enterprises of Armenia (UITE) Karen Vardanian expressed this opinion at the December 4 press conference. According to him, Lycos Europe was trying to sell the companies servicing its six portals for a year, but it failed to do so. So the management of Lycos Europe decided to stop the operation of these companies with low profitability. In the opinion of K. Vardanian, Lycos Armenia with its 200 employees and "unique services" will be purchased by another company within the next few months. K. Vardanian said that in case of Epygi Labs AM, the uncoordinated work of the local team developing high-quality production and the U.S. team selling that production was evident. Nevertheless, in his words, "it happened during the crisis, so we cannot say that the crisis did not affect" the behavior of the above mentioned European and U.S. companies. K. Vardanian believes that with the aim of neutralizing the impact of the crisis on Armenian IT sector, the country's government should adopt an aggressive strategy of entrance into markets of countries with an economic growth, taking into account the fact that 60% of the sector's production is currently exported to the countries which are now in economic recession. 20% of IT production is exported to Russia, 50% - to the U.S, and the rest - to Europe. According to experts, the recession will continue in the U.S. and Europe for two years. K. Vardanian expressed an opinion that the sale capacities should be increased in markets of Arab states, China and other countries of South-East Asia.

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