Not surprisingly, the minimal IT development in Russia is located in and around the major urban centers of the country. In general, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Vladivostok are the main focus areas for domestic or foreign investment including IT. Another possible seed of future potential is in the Ural city of Snezhinsk, a formerly closed Soviet military industrial center. As Russia has pulled so much of its investment out of technological R&D and put into the more dire needs of the society as a whole, scientists are out of work and looking for money to survive. Snezhinsk has been proposed as the new Russian high-tech commercial sector. Establishing this area on the model of a US Silicon Valley with investment from the West would help inject much needed jobs and investment creating an economic prosperous zone to get the country back on track in their bid for modernization. Also, it would help find work for the masses of unemployed scientists who are seeking jobs and hard currency abroad, even from rogue countries in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

This idea has been proposed and investigated by members in the US Congress, but is still far from becoming a reality. A large scale investment in a region like the Urals without the proper business and communications infrastructure is unlikely given the current state of the Russian society and economy. A more plausible scenario in the near future is the advancement of tech centers in and around the major urban and educational facilities in Russia where bright, young students will continue to advance the IT market with software and hardware production.

The following paragraphs showing some of the bright spots for IT development in Russia are taken from multiple reports on regional business and IT development in Russia.

As the third biggest city in Russia, Nizhny Novgorod inherited a sound research and development base from the Soviet era. The city hosts almost a hundred research institutes and scientific labs, most of them used to service the military sector ten years ago. Some of these high-tech institutions generated the first wave of software programmers in the city. The second wave were the graduates and post-graduates of the two largest local Universities: Nizhny Novgorod State University (name after N. Lobachevsky) with its five physics and mathematics departments of different profiles, and the Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University. On average, 30,000 university students are educated in the different fields of scientific techniques including software development, radio physics technology, communication, electronics, physics, mechanics, theoretic physics, etc. There are 58,000 scientists, researchers, designers, and 2,000 PhDs, who live and work in the Nizhny Novgorod region, representing 7% of all Russian scientific and engineering resources.

The 1.5-million Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia and the biggest city east of the Urals. Academgorodok (academic town), a small city 30 km south of Novosibirsk, with a workforce of 15,000 scientists and researchers and 5,000 students, has become an essential source of employment and revenue for IT specialists in the region. The Moscow Times has called it Siberia's Silicon Valley thanks to its high concentration of software companies and talented programmers. 25 software companies are based in this area. Most of them are involved in the offshore programming business that has been developing in the last few years in Russia. High concentration of high-quality programmers fostered by NGU (Novosibirsk State University) and low labor cost create opportunities for local software companies be competitive in software development market along with Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The Russian Far East computer market is developing dynamically, especially in Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. The local market is dominated by small companies purchasing computer parts and components from Moscow-based distributors and branches of multinational companies or Asian Pacific manufacturers, and assembling computers locally following the buyer's needs.

St Petersburg factory of Lucent Technologies has completed the certification process to meet ISO 9002 international standard. Lucent Technologies opened its factory in St Petersburg, Russia in 1998 and is assembling various telecommunication blocks for the local market. Obtaining a new international standard will enable Lucent Technologies to market its locally assembled products internationally.

The US Commercial Service in St. Petersburg has identified that Telecommunications Equipment is one of the sectors representing the greatest overall potential for US companies in Northwest Russia:

Fryazino (population 53,368) is located 25 kilometers northeast of Moscow. It is connected with Moscow by highway and has access to the railroad.

Fryazino is a center of science and electronics industry. 48 science and research enterprises operate in the rayon. Local enterprises are involved in research, development and production of microwave diapason items, lasers, apparatii for linear radio connection, means for reflecting the information, equipment for local fiber-optic and coaxial connections, and medical equipment.

Samara Optical Cable Company

SOCC was founded in 1997 as a joint venture between Samara Cable Company and Corning International Inc.(USA). The company’s quality management system has ISO 9002 certificate, issued by Dutch Certification Company KEMA (member of IQNet). Corning Incorporated is an exclusive supplier of optic fiber to SOCC; the equipment used in the production is supplied by SWISSCAB (Switzerland) and MALI (Austria). One of the main customers of SOCC is Rostelecom. The company is also looking to expand its market by participating in different tenders and studying export opportunities.

MOBIKOM is a small company, which produces base stations controllers for cellular connection in small regional towns. These controllers are used in NMT-450 and GSM-900 standards. To produce them, the company buys foreign hardware and inserts the necessary software. MOBIKOM started to develop base stations for SMARTS-Samara GSM. MOBICOM is interested in products of EXCEL SWITCHING CORP (USA) especially EXCEL platforms, which could be transformed particular to the regional needs.

Author: Timothy H Clinton
Last Updated: December 2000

Posted on: 08/17/02

Source: http://www.american.edu/carmel/tc9886a/geographics.html

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