Category: Software
Rostelecom, the state-owned telecom operator, has completed phase one of “Project 07,” the national cloud computing platform to be fully put together by 2015 as part of the federal Information Society program.
The platform, launched in beta version in March under the o7.com domain name, offers cloud-based software, infrastructure and development platform services (SaaS, IaaS and PaaS, respectively).
Last week, the Russian high tech company Vocord introduced a new 3D face recognition and identification system that can be used in any public place.
The system, which Vocord has presented as a technological breakthrough, takes pictures from different angles to build a 3D model of the face. This ‘non-cooperative’ approach does not require the person to position his or her face in the camera’s vision range for facial detailing. Indeed, the subject does not even need to know that he or she is being filmed.
Earlier this week, the Ukrainian-Russian-American startup Jelastic, which offers a cloud-based hosting platform for Java application developers, announced it has secured an investment of $2 million from Almaz Capital Partners and Foresight Ventures.
This ‘Series A’ funding round brings the startup’s total financing to $2.5 million. In December 2010, Jelastic received seed funding from Runa Capital, a Moscow-based fund that operates internationally. Jelastic recently celebrated reaching the 15,000 unique users milestone only seven months after its beta launch.
After spending three years in a post-crisis mire, IT sales in Russia reached an all-time high in 2011, IDC reported to Vedomosti and CNews.ru. According to IDC analysts, the Russian IT sector posted double-digit gains last year, growing at a CAGR of 25% to $30 billion, staging a spectacular comeback from 2009’s 40% year-on-year sag.
Russia’s IT slump was the most painful among IT markets worldwide, and the recent growth surpassed IDC’s more conservative growth forecasts for 2011, released last November, by more than ten percentage points.
Already present in 22 countries worldwide, Russian Navigation Technologies (RNT), a leading manufacturer and integrator of fleet management solutions and other telematics systems operating under the Auto Tracker brand, announced it is now opening up South America’s fleet management market.
Announcing last week a new JV in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the firm has not only set up shop in the world’s sixth largest economy – which was also the fifth largest car market in 2011 – but also plans to sell transport telematics services all across the South American continent.
1C, the Russian enterprise software giant, has acquired a 51% stake in Megaplan, a publisher of cloud-based business service solutions, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported yesterday. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.
The Russian management company IQ One, an early investor in Megaplan, has kept a blocking minority share in the company.
A leading player on Russia’s young but flourishing market of online accounting services, Moe Delo (pronounced ‘Moyo Dyelo’) announced last week it raised $4 million from Klever Internet Investments. The valuation of the company was not disclosed, but Moe Delo’s founders Sergey Panov and Maxim Yaremko kept a controlling stake, according to the press release.
Even though the Russian IT market is growing fast, having recovered completely from the 2008-2009 crisis, a number of issues have come to the forefront.
The Russian Minister of Communications Igor Shchegolev has reported that the country’s information technologies market saw a growth spurt of 14.6 percent in 2011, and the Ministry of Economic Development predicts that the market will grow by 15.8 percent in 2012, and by 18.1 percent in 2013, hitting no less than $32 billion.
Vist Group, a major, twenty-year-old Russian developer of turn-key IT solutions for mine fleet and railroad management systems, is considering seeking capital market opportunities, according to Reuters. A resident of Skolkovo, the government-sponsored technology hub outside Moscow, Vist could thus become the first Skolkovo resident to orchestrate an IPO.
Vist has declined to make any public comments, but observers presume the company could be eyeing the Innovation and Investment Market, a special trading platform within Russia’s MICEX stock exchange that is focused on high tech companies. The timeframe for the possible IPO is subject to speculation.
In 2011, SAP generated more revenues in Russia and the neighboring CIS countries than any of the other BRIC countries. The Russia and CIS region accounted for the fourth largest contribution to the firm’s global revenues, just after the USA, Germany, and the UK, news agency RIA Novosti reported.
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