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ITSF Becomes a Household Name
10th anniversary IT & Security Forum ended in Kazan. This year, the Forum gathered 917 participants. People from all over Russia, including 9 Federal Districts and more than 80 cities and towns from Khabarovsk to Simferopol, came to the event.
Rustam Minnikhanov, the President of the Republic of Tatarstan, visited the Forum. He looked over the demonstration zone where technological novelties of the IT market were presented and delivered a welcome speech at the plenary panel of the Forum. In his speech, Rustam Minnikhanov noted that the Republic of Tatarstan is now one of the leading regions in cutting-edge technologies, and governmental authorities intend to create the most favorable conditions for the development of high-tech projects. IT & Security Forum is seen as one of the mechanisms of attracting the most demanded technologies to Kazan: «It is gratifying to say that during 10 years this conference has been gathering the leading manufacturers in the sphere of IT and information security. The participants demonstrate innovation achievements, exchange new technologies, offer solutions for a wide variety of applied tasks focused on the demands of the government, business, and population.»
In his report, Minister of Informatization and Communication Roman Shaykhutdinov emphasized the importance of such industry meetings: «They are good for forming strong ties and traditions, and the most important thing is that contacts between real enterprises functioning in real economy and innovation sector are established.» The Minister also noted that already today one may talk of ITSF as a household name because this name is well-known and widely used among professionals. «A 10-year anniversary is a considerable age,» he added.
Meanwhile, not only the Forum but also the Company that has initiated and organized the Forum, has an anniversary this year. In midsummer, ICL Group is going to celebrate its 25th anniversary. At the press conference, Victor Diachkov, the General Director, acquainted the participants with the key facts related to the corporate history. According to him, the idea to create the Company was driven by the necessities of the times, when the Ministry of Electronics Industry became uncompetitive, and Kazan Computer Plant had to integrate with western leading companies to get access to technologies. In so doing, a joint venture with ICL, a UK company, was founded in 1991. Since then, form of incorporation has changed several times. As for focus on sustainable and progressive growth, it is always inherent to the Company. At last year end, ICL Group’s volume of sales increased by 12 per cent. Plans for the nearest future include a new investment project consisting in creation of a Technopark with 1,300 working positions at the territory of Innopolis Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Usady, and completion of the second phase of IT Village construction with planned investment amounting to 50 mln rubles.
Overall, 25 world’s and Russia’s leading IT manufacturers brought their solutions to the jubilee Forum. The demonstration zone had a total floor space of 660 square meters. It was divided into several topical units: information security, business solutions, network technologies, virtualization, infrastructure, ICS cybersecurity. The exhibition booths dedicated to technologies displayed the whole range of IT components: from information systems and software through to server hardware and full-featured mock-ups of security systems for industrial objects.
The unified automated information system (UAIS), Staffing, developed by ICL Group for automating personnel management in civil service and implemented in the Republic of Tatarstan was demonstrated in one of the exhibition booths.
Besides, a special conference for representatives of government agencies, dedicated to application of information technologies in HR, was held within the IT & Security Forum. Among its participants were HR managers from administrations of the highest officials of the Volga Federal District territorial entities. The conference was organized by the Presidential Administration of the Republic of Tatarstan and Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University. Alexander Belov, the Head of the Civil Service and Personnel Department under the RT President, spoke about the experience of the Republic of Tatarstan in creation of this Staffing UAIS. According to him, personnel records management is a routine process, and its automation has reduced time and labour input by 30 percent.
One more topic in the focus of attention of the Forum participants was industrial cybersecurity. Aidar Guzairov, Deputy General Director for Business Development, ICL Group, named it as an actively developing area of security business. The world’s and Russia’s largest companies specializing in information security have recently begun working on information security mechanisms for industrial objects. However, great perspectives are evident even now because in the future these solutions will be more and more demanded. Taking this into consideration, ICL Group purposely invests in the development of this area of work. Among other things, the opening of the ICS Information Security Competence Center on the premises of Innopolis was timed to coincide with the jubilee Forum. On May 25, the first event was held in the Center. It was a master class in ICS Information Security, with 45 participants. According to Aidar Guzairov, manufacturing companies, namely Kaspersky Lab, Positive Technologies, Check Point will become the Center’s partners. Such educational institutions as Kazan State Power Engineering University, Innopolis University, and Academy of Information Systems will also join the ranks of partners.
The following 25 companies were the partners of the jubilee Forum: Dell, Check Point, NetApp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, VMware, EMC, Positive Technologies, Tufin, Huawei, Unify, Forcepoint, Kaspersky Lab, Veritas, Intel Security, IBM, Gemalto, TESSIS, Gazinformservis, Brocade, APC by Schneider Electric, Gazproektengineering, Cisco, Solar Security, Innopolis, and Innopolis University.
The media partners of the Conference were: RUBEZH Magazine, 12 news, Astera, BISA, BISjournal, CNews, CRN, DailyComm, Expozilla, GlobalCIO, NBJ, PC Magazine, Retail & Loyalty, SecurityLab, TAdviser, TatCenter.ru, The Analytical Banking Magazine, Bankir.Ru, Bankovskie Tekhnologii (Banking Technologies), Bankovskoe Obozrenie (Banking Review), Business Online, TASS News Agency, dv.land, IKS-MEDIA, Realnoe Vremya (Real Time), and Expert Tatarstan.
“We presume that it was a successful decade. More than that, the Forum moved to an entirely new level. That was the first time when a dedicated conference for government agencies was held within the Forum. So, we hosted the discussion of hot topics interesting for a targeted audience,” commented Aidar Guzairov. “This year the Forum accumulated solutions for promotion of the Tatarstan projects. Solutions which Innopolis University can offer to the industry, as well as best practices used in the Republic in the field of HR management in civil service, were presented at the Forum.”
