Russian IT Thought Leaders Discuss Sanctions at SPIEF 2014

03/06/2014

A group of thought leaders from the Russian IT industry gathered at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2014 on the morning of May 24 to discuss the convergence of information technologies with pharma, biotech, nano, and other New Economy leading sectors. They also addressed the impact that U.S. and EU sanctions were having on the IT industry.

The event titled “Prospects for the Russian IT Sector: Markets, Workforce, Strategy” was organized by Russian Venture Company (RVC), RUSSOFT, and the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC).

Moderated by RUSSOFT President Valentin Makarov and the Director of RAEC Sergei Plugotarenko, the invited speakers discussed the future development of the IT industry in Russia being largely dependent on building human capacity and implementing appropriate strategies for promoting promising technologies on the global market.

Speakers at the event included, CEO and Chairman of the Board with RVC Igor Agamirzian; Acronis CEO Sergey Beloussov; General Director of Speech Technology Center Dmitry Dyrmovsky; CEO of Reksoft Alexander Egorov; Vice President of Prognoz Vladimir Eskin; President and CEO of GGA Software Services Richard Golob; World Bank Director for Transport, Water, Information and Communications Technology Jose Luis Irigoyen; President of IBS Group Anatoly Karachinsky; Deputy Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications Mark Shmulevich; and Vladimir Vasiliev, Rector at St. Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, among others.

Richard Golob, whose company GGA Software employs 600 Russian professionals in St. Petersburg and works with 8 of the top 10 global pharma companies, addressed the effect of the sanctions saying, “Today, we are very fortunate that we haven’t seen any impact of sanctions on our business. We’ve had our clients within the large, global, pharma and medical device companies asking us about the status of the situation in Russia and Ukraine. And we are as good as CNN — or maybe better — to give them a sense of what’s happening.”

“So far no one has terminated any existing contracts, and no one has indicated that any contracts currently under discussion will be terminated,” said Golob. “The biggest question for us as a company, and for our industry, is what the future will bring; whether companies that have been considering Russia as a location for an innovation center, a research center, or an outsourcing center will take Russia from the top of the group of potential sites and bring it down to what they consider a higher risk group. That is an unknown; we just can’t determine what the future will bring. But so far, so good.”

Asked what he thought of the prospects for Russian companies in Germany in light of the sanctions and whether or not Russian companies should leave the European market in favor of China, CEO of Reksoft Alexander Egorov said, “We should not leave any markets. I think that we are excessively focused on politics. It may have an impact on our work on a macro level but at a micro level, I have not seen much of an impact on our Western customers. I have spent many hours speaking with people and telling them that everything will be fine. There has been a lot of time spent on that, which I think could be spent in a much better way.”

Vladimir Eskin, Vice President of Prognoz, a Perm-based business intelligence and business process management market software developer that works with many organizations internationally and has a significant number of clients in Africa and the U.S., when asked if his company was looking elsewhere for business opportunities in light of the sanctions said, “So far the political situation in Ukraine has not had any impact on us. In addition to Africa, we have been doing business in the Persian Gulf countries. These countries — Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar — are all quite promising. We do business with them, and the markets are very good. Software companies are able to see significant sales there, and I think this is a point in time when Russian software companies can roll out to that region and do good business.”

Valentin Makarov, president of RUSSOFT Association, added: “Within the last 25 years, the Russian software industry has been living in different environments, from very aggressive in the 1990s to relatively positive in 2010 and beyond. Fortunately, the Russian software industry was very successful and created a very good and stable brand as an extremely creative and powerful industry with large human resources. As such, our customers use our software and IT-services because of their top quality, regardless of the political turbulence around, which in fact has nothing to do with real business”.

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