Translated material
Happiness is not in oil
Russia is a partner country of the international high technology exhibition
CeBIT-2007, the International Exhibition of Information and Communication Technologies, opens on March 15 in Hannover (Germany). A year ago, CeBIT celebrated its twentieth anniversary , and this year the Russian Federation is participating in the exhibition for the first time as a partner country. The official opening ceremony of the exhibition will take place on March 14 with the participation of the top leadership of Germany and Russia, the ministers of information technology and communications of the G8 countries, the European Union, Brazil, Mexico, China, Kenya, India, Egypt and Australia and other countries, as well as top managers of the world's leading companies in the infocommunication industry. On March 14, a round table of the ministers of information technologies and communications of the G8 states will be held, in which the Minister of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation Leonid Reiman plans to participate.CeBIT has been in the spotlight of IT industry professionals for many years : in 2006, the exhibition was visited by more than 430 thousand people, 85% of whom were specialists. Participation in the exhibition in the status of a partner country is important for Russia from the point of view of changing its place in the international division of labor - diversification of exports, in which hydrocarbons still play a leading role, through high-tech products has been officially declared a strategic goal of economic development. The domestic IT and communications industry, growing by 20-25% annually since 2000, is particularly promising in this sense.
For the first time, Russia became an exhibitor at CeBIT in 1991, when our country was represented by nine participating companies. In 2006, 88 representatives of the Russian IT industry occupied about 2000 square meters. m of exhibition space, and this year 150 participants from Russia will demonstrate their products and developments on an area of 4,300 sq. m. m. In terms of the size of the exposition, Russia will take fourth place among foreign participants after China, Taiwan and the USA.
Over the past few years, the growth rate of the telecommunications and IT industry market in Russia has been more than three times faster than the economic growth rate of the country as a whole. The total volume of the infocommunication technology sector in 2006 was about $44 billion (27% more than in 2005); including income from communication services amounted to $28.1 billion (an increase of 27.6% over the year). The volume of foreign investment in the development of communications is growing quite steadily - in 2006 the increase was 26% ($4.1 billion) compared to 2005. This is partly due to the general growth of the IT market due to favorable conditions for Russia, but partly due to government regulation measures. Among the latest examples of this kind are the demonopolization of the market for long-distance communication services and the introduction of the “caller pays” principle. In 2004, the country adopted the Communications Law, which corresponds to international experience in regulating the industry. In 2006, the government approved the concept of regional informatization until 2010, and the laws “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” and “On Personal Data” were adopted. Amendments have been introduced to the Tax Code to provide tax reductions for exporting companies in the field of information technology. It is planned to create two new government structures: the Federal Agency for Information Systems and the Federal Agency for Support of Exports in the Field of Information Technologies.
The status of a CeBIT partner has not only political, but also utilitarian economic significance for Russia. The volume of exports of Russian information technologies, primarily software products, grew by almost 80% in 2006 and reached $1.8 billion. The country is the third largest (after India and China) provider of software development services. According to experts from KPMG and the Economist Intelligence Unit, Russia is one of the ten countries that in the next few years have a chance to become one of the main global suppliers of IT products and so-called high-level IT services. The latter, in contrast to traditional custom programming (often called “offshore programming”), involves the use of qualified engineering and research labor in various subject areas - aircraft design and in general in mechanical engineering, pharmaceuticals, bio- and nanotechnology projects.
But so far, Russian programmers feel more confident than others in the external hi-tech market. The ability to export complex and sometimes unique software is gradually becoming part of Russia's international image. Among the largest Russian exporters of finished software products, many companies well known abroad will be represented at the exhibition. These include ABBYY (optical text recognition systems, electronic dictionaries), 1C (complex automation systems for business management), Kaspersky Lab and Doctor Web (information security, anti-virus programs) and a number of small companies specializing in offshore programming.
It is significant that in 2006, many large foreign IT companies opened or significantly expanded their software development centers in Russia. Among them are Intel, IBM, Siemens, Sun Microsystems, Motorola, EMC, Hewlett-Packard. For example, Intel and Sun - and these are transnational American companies with enormous influence on the global information technology market - have the second largest research units in Russia (after the United States). The services of Russian developers are also used by Microsoft, Boeing, Bank of America, Xerox, Samsung Electronics, Nortel Networks.
The exposition “Russia is a partner country of CeBIT-2007” will consist of collective pavilions formed with the support of the Ministry of Information and Communications of Russia in the sections “Telecommunications”, “IT Products”, “Outsourcing”, “Scientific Developments”, as well as independent stands of Russian companies. The competition for organizing a Russian exposition at CeBIT-2007 was announced by the Ministry of Information and Communications at the end of January, and 8.2 million rubles were allocated from the federal budget to support participation in CeBIT for the winning companies of the competition. According to Oleg Byakhov, head of the information society strategy department of the Ministry of Information and Communications, when selecting exhibitors, preference was given to companies that already have connections with German partners (several major agreements are being prepared for signing at the exhibition). The content of the Russian exposition will be determined by four areas: communications, business processes, banks and finance, digital equipment and systems. On March 15, the Russian-German IT summit will begin at the exhibition, and on March 16, within the framework of the summit, the section “Technology Parks - Investment Opportunities” will open.