Open Technologies reported on the work of the St. Petersburg branch.
Open Technologies has been operating in the Russian system integration market since 1994.
The company's key areas of activity are solving infrastructure problems, including network integration, supply of computing equipment, data storage and processing equipment, construction of telecommunication networks, and software services.
Among the main vendors with which Open Technologies works are Sun Microsystems, HP, IBM, Oracle, EMC, Veritas, etc.
The company's main specialization is the development and implementation of infrastructure projects for large customers, management and implementation consulting, and the implementation of complex IT solutions.
The integrator's clients include such companies as Rostelecom, Bank of Moscow, MegaFon, Dalsvyaz, Kazakhtelecom, VimpelCom, Eldorado, etc.
In 2006, the company's annual turnover was $234 million, of which $117 million was brought in by regional offices, and $111 million by the Moscow office. A special feature of the Open Technologies business is its active development in the regions, which has been going on for eight years.
The first representative office of Open Technologies appeared in Perm, and today the company has 15 branches in all major regions of the country and two representative offices abroad, one of which is located in Switzerland.
According to the results of 2006, 30% of the company's total turnover was made up of regional offices. Among the most successfully developing offices are the St. Petersburg, Ural and Novosibirsk offices.
The company's immediate plans include strengthening its presence in Norilsk, Novosibirsk, and Krasnoyarsk. One of the company's recent global projects is rebranding (see the news release from December 5, 2006).
The St. Petersburg representative office of Open Technologies has been operating since April 2005 and is engaged in promoting the entire range of services and solutions for project and system integration to the local market.
Let us recall that the representative office in the Northwestern Federal District was initially created for the project of infrastructure development and implementation of the Oracle ERP system in the local branch of Svyazinvest, North-West Telecom OJSC.
Currently, the representative office is actively cooperating with other customers, the number of which already exceeds 40. Among the largest of them, in addition to NWT, are Sky Link, Dirol-Cadbury, Web Plus, etc.
At a press conference dedicated to the two-year anniversary of the work of the representative office of Open Technologies in St. Petersburg, which took place yesterday, April 18, the director of the St. Petersburg representative office of the company, Konstantin Zhebenev, spoke about the structure of the business in the region and plans for the development of the office in the Northern capital.
The St. Petersburg office's current area of expertise includes IT service outsourcing, consulting on ERP system implementation (Oracle E-Business Suite, IFS) and IT consulting, as well as infrastructure services — creation of office networks (based on Cisco, Huawei, D-Link equipment) and data centers (based on IBM, HP, Sun Microsystems, EMS solutions). The St. Petersburg office also deals with project management and general contracting, implementation of billing systems for housing and communal services, custom software development, and creation of automated process control systems.
The office provides a full range of information security services, which include, among other things, combating insider trading (unauthorized transfer of company data by an employee to representatives of another company).
Now St. Petersburg's Open Technologies is mastering another new direction — «intelligent building», within the framework of which it provides a full range of services for the automation of one of the residential buildings under construction, from the design and construction of energy-saving systems to the automation of parking.
A team of six specialists who previously worked with another St. Petersburg IT company, whose name is not disclosed, has been brought in for this project. The St. Petersburg office plans to continue the head office's policy of developing competence centers, in particular, opening a competence center for Oracle and IFS solutions.
Based on the results of 2006, the growth of the company's St. Petersburg representative office's turnover on the free market (not taking into account the project being implemented for SZT) was 90%, and the total number of projects increased by 20%.
According to Sergey Dryagin, Director of Regional Development for Open Technologies, the company's St. Petersburg representative office does 80% of its business on its own.
The representative office has a staff of 48 people, of which 10 are ERP consultants, 6 are commercial personnel, 24 are engineering personnel, and the staff also includes 3 project managers. The plans for 2007 include increasing the number of employees by at least 10 people.
Company representatives note the shortage of qualified specialists and plan to organize a specialized training center as a solution to the problem.
According to Konstantin Zhebenev, the representative office feels high competition in the local market both from strong local players and other federal integrators who open representative offices in St. Petersburg.
However, he emphasized that among the Moscow IT companies that have entered the market of the Northern capital, Open Technologies demonstrates the most stable and intensive growth.
Konstantin Zhebenev noted that today St. Petersburg is approaching Moscow in terms of maturity and market readiness in terms of automation of production.
In addition to expanding the competence of the representative office, growth will be ensured by strengthening its position in other regions of the North-West, where small local offices will be opened to support local customers. In particular, the company already has customers in Murmansk, Komi, Veliky Novgorod, Arkhangelsk and other cities.
Recall that the wave of large capital players entering the St. Petersburg market began about two years ago.
Here we can note such companies as Softline (this company is also becoming more active on the local market, see the news release of March 30, 2007), Mikrotest (about the plans of this player, see the news release of April 3, 2007), GMCS (this integrator also recently announced its plans to develop the Northwestern Federal District market, see the news release of April 10, 2007).
Among the last to open representative offices in the Northern Capital were the consulting companies FBK (see the news release of March 28, 2007) and BDO Unicon.
Among other Russian IT companies that began to develop the regional market during this period, we can note Cognitive Technologies, I-Teco, Infosystems Jet (this player at one time also announced more active development in St. Petersburg, see the news release of June 19 2006).
Among the notable integrators that began to develop the North-West market a little earlier than the above-mentioned players, Columbus IT can be noted.
The domestic developers of ERP systems «Galaktika» and «Parus» have been working on the local market for quite a long time.