Leading exporters’ view on global market’s technology trends during the crisis. How well the Russian companies are prepared for the time’s challenges in technology? What the entire industry should do in order to compete technologically on global market?

These and other issues will be discussed by the leaders of Russian software product and service companies as well as development centers of biggest international vendors.

Moderator: Valentin Makarov

President, RUSSOFT

Valentin Makarov was born in April 16, 1955 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia.

He graduated from Leningrad Aircraft Instrumentation Institute (now State University of Space Instruments, St.-Petersburg) in 1978 and had been working in Defense industry until 1985. In 1993 he attended courses of Manchester Business School and in 2000—courses of Diplomatic Academy of Russia.

Since 1985 and until 2000 Valentin Makarov devoted his life and energy to extending economic and cultural ties of St. Petersburg and Russia within the country and overseas, while working in the Leningrad Polytechnic University, then in the Permanent Delegation of Russian Federation to UNESCO, in the “Association of Free Economic zones of St.-Petersburg” and finally as the deputy chairman of the Committee of External Relations of Administration of St.-Petersburg.

In 1999 he was elected the president of the “St Petersburg Consortium «Fort Ross» IT services”, then after amalgamation with the National Software Development Association in May 2004 he became president of the united “RUSSOFT Association”, which is the unique voice of the software development industry in Russia.

Valentin Makarov got significant experience of lobbying interests of the industry in the State of Russian Federation. He had been also involved in conducting Nation-wide market studies and organizing marketing activities of RUSSOFT in Russia and abroad (Russian IT-Seasons, Road-shows, ROSS Forum, etc.). He was also representing APKIT (Russian IT&Computer Association) in WITSA in 2002–2007.

Participants

Alexander Pozdniakov

CEO, First Line Software

Alexander Pozdniakov is an 18-year veteran of the IT industry. Alexander started his IT career in 1993 as Head of Telecommunications at Inform Bank, where he successfully managed the delivery of one of the first electronic banking projects in Russia. Between 1995 and 1996, he worked as a lead consultant in one of the leading system integrators in St. Petersburg, Russia, delivering services to the leading international firms including Arthur Andersen, Unilever, Caterpillar and others. Between 1996 and 1999, Alexander headed up the IT and Telecom Department at one of Russia’s largest food importers, directing a team of 30 employees to implement a series of large-scale IT programs spanning 25 sites in four different countries and impacting over 4,000 users worldwide.

Alexander first joined the company he now runs, which was operating as StarSoft at the time, in 1999 as a Project Manager. After successfully delivering a series of critical projects for customers in Western Europe in the US, he quickly rose through the ranks, finally achieving the position of the COO in 2004, in which he served through 2009. In that time, which includes both the independent operation of StarSoft and the period after the merger with Exigen Services in 2007, Alexander managed the entire production staff including multiple development, testing and process groups, while also supervising all supplementary departments across the company (HR, Hiring and Technical Support) and ensuring smooth operations and manageability of the company as a whole. During that period, Alexander directed the growth of the delivery organization from 100 to almost 1,500 people, managing 8 separate delivery locations, many of which he personally set up. He was also a major contributor to most pre-sales activities, supervised key account managers, and served as the escalation point for the majority of the company’s clients.

As First Line’s CEO, Alexander Pozdniakov is responsible for the company’s strategy, for driving the business development efforts, and for the operations of the delivery organization in its entirety. In just over two years, he has taken First Line from 10 to 350+ employees and $12 million in revenue (2011).

Andrey Ivanov

COO, JetBrains

Since 2010 Andrey Ivanov is the member of executive team in JetBrains company, the world leader in professional software development tools. During this time, the main development center of JetBrains in St. Petersburg has doubled, and the company shows a steady growth of turnover by 40% per year.

Prior to that Andrey was the leader of the St. Petersburg Development Centers, such as Borland and Yandex, and ran his own company SwiftTeams. His overall path in IT-sector is 17 years long, starting from a programmer to the senior manager in international business in a high-professional team.

Andrey is one of the founders of the Academy of Modern Software Engineering, where during two years of the free study students can can get additional relevant knowledge demanded by the programming market.

Currently, the Academy is part of the Computer Science Center (http://compscicenter.ru), where Andrey is leading the Software Engineering stream.

Andrey is also the deputy director of the Department of Mathematics and Information Technologies in St. Petersburg Academic University of the Russian Academy of Sciences (http://mit.spbau.ru).

Andrey realizes the importance of preparing the young professionals for the rapidly growing IT market, and actively developes relations with relevant higher education institutions in St. Petersburg and the regions. In the nearest future JetBrains will open a new lab in one of the leading Russian educational institutions.

Andrey garduated from the Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University (LETI) in 1994.

Arkadiy Dobkin

President and CEO, EPAM Systems

Mr. Dobkin is the cofounder, CEO and President of EPAM Systems, the largest software engineering firm with development centers in Central and Eastern Europe.

After earning an MS in Electrical Engineering from the Byelorussian National Technical University, Mr. Dobkin began his career in Minsk, Belarus, where he worked for several emerging software development companies before immigrating to the United States in 1991.

Since 1993, when EPAM was co-founded by Mr. Dobkin, the company under his direction has grown to become one of the world’s leading software engineering firms with focus on developing software products for top and emerging software companies as well as on delivering complex, mission critical solutions for large global corporations.

Today, with over 7,000 software engineers across its development centers in CEE and thousands delivered projects in North America and Europe, EPAM is recognized as a leading software engineering firm by such major company’s clients as Oracle, SAP, Google, IBM, UBS, Barclays Capital, The Coca Cola Company, Adidas, Expedia, Thomson Reuters, and Viacom among many others.

In February of 2012 Mr. Dobkin, joined by the company’s management team, ringed the NYSE Opening Bell to signify trades opening on the day, when EPAM Systems commenced its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange and became the first software engineering firm from CEE region publicly traded on such major global stock exchange.

A recipient of numerous awards, in June 2008 Ernst & Young named Mr. Dobkin winner of The Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2008 award in New Jersey, Information Technology Consulting category. In 2006, Consulting Magazine named him to “Top 25 Most Influential Consultants”. In 2004, along with the CEOs of Wipro Technologies and CGI Group, Mr. Dobkin was spotlighted as a key industry influencer in the Foreign Relations category of CRN’s “Top 25 Executives” issue.

Through EPAM, Mr. Dobkin has been instrumental in opening the vast talent pool of the former Soviet Union region and Central and Eastern Europe to the global business community. He continues to actively promote this region across the US and Western Europe by presenting at noted international industry and technology events, such as Gartner Summits, Forrester’s GigaWorld IT Forum Europe, Russian Outsourcing & Software Summits, SAP TechEd, and others.

Grigory Labzovsky

Director, Oracle Saint-Petersburg Center of High Technology

Grigory heads the center for software development that currently employs more than 350 software engineers working on different software projects. Main development directions in the include: the Java platform technologies, Oracle C & C++ compilers, virtualization and SOA-technologies. It is under Grigory’s leadership that the Center of High Technology has successfully opened The Center of software technology competence; the largest software developer conference Sun Tech Days has been held for several times (with more than 3000 participants). Grigory has initiated an extensive cooperation with Russian academic community, including the St. Petersburg State University – the project that allows the University to be actively involved in the international Large Hadron Collider project.
In 2005–2007, Grigory managed several development projects, was responsible for the software development center operations and drove a set of strategic programs in the region.

Prior to his work at Sun Microsystems, Grigory was an engineering manager in the Russian company Elbrus (2002–2004). Before that he held a position of a research fellow at the Mathematical Institute for Scientific research. Grigory graduated from the Department of Physics of the St. Petersburg State University.