Today, Russian IT market grows faster than the worldwide one, though, according to analysts, high economic turbulence impedes its growth, and the market is not big yet. What does the industry lack? How have Tatarstan’s Information Technologies survived the corona crisis? On what projects does one of IT pioneers and leading players work? Victor Diachkov, the founder of ICL, threw light on those issues in his interview to “Realnoe Vremya”.
ICL has been divided into three clusters, one of which specializes in projects for military and security agencies
Q: Mr. Diachkov, when you quit as General Director, you said that you would focus on the Group strategy development. Why did you decide to quit and what did you do during the last two years?
A: The company grows, and, sooner or a later, it needs a person who will take up the issues of its future development. Strategy becomes more important than operation management. My decision was based exactly on that consideration. Markets grow, technologies develop. New opportunities arise, and we are to understand on what projects and industries we should focus and how we should develop the Group.
Therefore, we adopted a new strategy. It is about dividing ICL Group into three clusters: services and products, production, and projects for law enforcement and security agencies. Each of these focal areas has its own markets, its own technologies. 30 years of active development (according to our principle: “grow twice faster than the market”) made our business well diversified. And now we are defining in what markets we have the strongest positions, yielding the best results, to focus on them and not to waste resources on non-core activities and solutions.
Q: You have challenged the new General Director and the team to ensure the steady growth of the company, “outrunning the market growth rate”. Have they managed to do that? And how does Russian IT market grow as opposed to the worldwide one?
A: Speaking of percentage growth, world IT market grows slower than the Russian one (if you exclude impact of force majeure, for instance, the pandemic). But that is because we have started from different positions. In general, the world IT market grows annually by 3%. And in Russia, some segments grow by 10% and more, while the other ones face certain difficulties. We have very high economic turbulence. If something happens to the national currency, the ruble, hardware markets suffer most significantly. That is because budget for new hardware is set in rubles, and components are purchased by manufacturers in hard currency. At the same time, markets of IT services keep growing steadily: by 5% or even by 7–9% annually.
Q: Has the Group comparable growth?
A: In the Group, IT services make up 60% of business, and the growth is in congruence with the all-Russian trend.
The full interview with Victor Diachkov is published at the site of “Realnoe Vremya».
Photos by Rinat Nazmetdinov
