Programme

Makarov Valentin was born 16.04.1955 in Leningrad, Russia. Graduated from the Leningrad Aircraft Instrumentation Institute in 1978, in 1978-1985 he had been working in the Defense Industry. In 1985 entered the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. Since “perestroika” time he has got good experience of organizing international cooperation (1988-1992 – secretary in the Russian Delegation to UNESCO, in 1996-2000 as deputy Chairman of International relations’ Committee of Administration of St Petersburg). He has also got extended managerial experience in private business (1992-1996 – in Interprivatization Foundation and in the EuroConseil Rusian-French JV consulting company). President of RUSSOFT Association (earlier Fort Ross) since its foundation on 9.9.99, he has been organizer of lobbying campaigns in the Government and Chairman of numerous IT-events in Russia and abroad (RUSSOFT Forum, Software Outsourcing Summit, Mobile Software Forum, Russian IT-seasons). Chief-editor of the annual Russian export software industry survey since its beginning in 2003. Representative of Russian IT Association (APKIT) in WITSA in 2004-2006, 2012. Invited speaker at numerous international conferences and author of dozens of articles on IT in Russia.

Mr. Plugotarenko graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), Department of Physical and Quantum Electronics (1993–1996) and Department of Control and Applied Mathematics (1996–1999), certified as Physical Engineer specializing in Applied Mathematics and Physics.From 2002, he was leading ICT specialist at the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE UNESCO – http://ru.iite.unesco.org).In 2004–2006, he was executive director and, from 2007, director of the Runet Awards competition. Since 2005, he has served as coordinator of programme committees for some high-profile sectoral conference events, including the Russian Internet Forum (RIF), Russian Interactive Week (RIW) and others.In 2005–2007, he served as deputy executive director of the Regional Non-government Centre for Internet Technologies (ROCIT – www.rocit.ru) – the oldest NGO engaged in expert evaluation, promotion and development of the ICT segment in the Russian Federation, upholding the interests of Internet users. In 2007, he was elected executive director of ROCIT.From 2005 he was ideologue and founder of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (NP RAEC – www.raec.ru), promoting the interests of Russian Internet players. From 2006, he was deputy general manager of NP RAEC.In 2011–2013, Mr. Plugotarenko was member of the Council of Coordination Centre for National Top Level Domains RU/RF – www.cttld.ru. Since 2010, he has been director of The Russian Association for Electronic Communications (NP RAEC).

Born March 21, 1957 in Leningrad. 1979 – graduated from Leningrad State University (Department of Mathematics and Mechanics) specializing in Applied Mathematics. 1979–1988 – Research Assistant, Junior Scientific Researcher, Scientific Researcher of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 1986 – successfully defended his Candidate of Sciences thesis in Physics and Mathematics, USSR Academy of Sciences. 1984–1995 – Lecturer, Associate Professor of the Department of Computational Mathematics at Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, Faculty of Physics and Mechanics. 1988–1992 – Senior Scientist of the Leningrad Institute for Informatics and Automation of the USSR Academy of Sciences. 1991–1995 – Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer of AstroSoft Company, St. Petersburg. 1995–1996 – Consultant of Microsoft Consulting Services, Microsoft Middle East (Dubai). 1996–1997 – Senior Consultant / Head of Practice, Microsoft Consulting Services, Microsoft Eastern Europe. 1997–1999 – Head of Accounts Department, Microsoft Representative Office in Russia, Microsoft Eastern Europe. 1999–2003 – University Relations Manager, Microsoft Research Lab (UK). 2003–2005 – Head of Government Relations, Microsoft Representative Office in Russia, Microsoft Central and Eastern Europe. 2005–2007 – Chief Strategy Officer, Cabinet of the Chairman of Microsoft in Russia and CIS Countries, Microsoft Central and Eastern Europe. 2007–2009 – General Director of Software Development Centre of EMC Corporation in St. Petersburg. Since April 2009, he has held the position of Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Management Board of RVC OJSC.

Born: 31 August 1975, Volzhsky, Vologograd Oblast Education: 1998: graduated from Volgograd Academy of State Service cum laude. 2001: received PhD in Economics. PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY: 1996: Deputy CEO for Marketing and Finance at Volzhanin Bus Plant (new sales system, dealership network, brand promotion). 2002: CEO of Volzhanin (engineering, design and certifications center, new models launched). 2006: Founder, main shareholder and CEO of Volgabus holding (modernisation, production growth, new models). 2012: Participation in the development of gas-driven public transport proliferation (over 300 buses in 10 regions of Russia). 2015: work on the first self-driving bus begins. Participant of the Leaders Club, has a honorary certificate from President of Russian Federation Vladimir Putin from 2015. Married, has a son and a daughter. Hobbies include tennis and mountain climbing.

Alexander Galitsky is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Almaz Capital Partners. Almaz Capital Partners has offices in Moscow, Russia and Menlo Park, CA, and is backed by Cisco Systems, EBRD and IFC. He is a well-known innovator, entrepreneur and investor in Russia/CIS, Europe and the USA. Prior to Almaz, Alexander formed the ICT investment practice at Russian Technologies, one of the first venture capital funds in Russia, and made a several private successful investments. His past and current investments include: Parallels, Yandex, QIK (sold to Skype), Vyatta (sold to Brocade), Acumatica, Jelastic, NavMaps (sold to TeleAtlas), 2Can, Alawar, AlterGeo, SJLabs (sold to VocalTec), EverNote, GridGain, WikiMart, etc.Prior to his investment career, he founded and headed five successful high-tech companies as CEO, including ELVIS+, TrustWorks Systems (sold to Hamsard), EzWIM (sold to TMT Ventures), ELVIS Telecom (sold to Telenor), NPC ELVIS. He specialized in WiFi, Virtual Private Network technology and product development on the Global market in partnership with Sun Microsystems and was a pioneer of the Russian Internet industry in 90s.

Andrey Dukhvalov – Chief Strategy Architect, Head of Future Technologies Department at Kaspersky Lab. Working in the software business for almost 30 years, Andrey has been employed in various roles – from software engineer to software strategic architect – in system and application-level software development projects. For the last 18 years Andrey has been developing security software at Kaspersky Lab. Future Technologies Department led by Andrey is busy with new cyber protecting methodology researching and developing of new technologies on that base. One of Andrey’s key current projects is the radically new secure operating system being developed as a platform dedicated to a wide range of specialized solutions where trust is of paramount importance. Another important Andrey’s project is Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity – dedicated solution to protect industrial control systems against cyber attacks.

Dmitry Dyrmovskiy graduated from the Specialized Educational Scientific Centre (SESC) at Novosibirsk State University (NSU) in 1996 and from the Zhukovsky Air force engineering Academy (VVIA) in 2001 and had been working in The Ministry of defence of the Russian Federation as a scientific engineer until 2004. In 2004 he started working in a Russian company engaged in development of speech technology and multimodal biometrics called STC as a project leader. In 2007 he became Head of the Moscow branch. Since 2012 Mr.Dyrmovskiy is Member of the STCs’ Board of Directors and in 2014 he was named General Director of the company. In 2014 he successfully completed Executive course at IMD Business School (Switzerland). In 2014 Dmitry Dyrmovskiy was elected Vice-President of the National Association of contact centers. In 2015 he became Board Member of RUSSOFT Association. In 2015 Mr.Dyrmovskiy joined Special Expert Council on Russian Software under the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation. In 2016 he became Board Member of Russian Software Products Association "Russian Software".

Oleg has over 20 years of experience in IT field. His career path has started in one of the American IT companies where Oleg worked in R&D and was responsible for consulting a number of New York governmental institutions. In 2003 Oleg has joined Luxoft and during his first years in the company he was responsible for a big international project with Dell. In 2009 he started managing Dell CoE within Luxoft what resulted in establishing corporate ERP practice. Then there was a successful experience of managing Luxoft St. Petersburg marked by Branch steady growth and attracting a number of new customers. Since 2015 Oleg is responsible for managing Luxoft Russia. Oleg has Master degree with distinction in Engineering and Technology from Tula State University.

David leads the Channel Ecosystem across Europe including all Partners in the IBM One Channel Partner program. Including Value Added Distributors, Value Resellers, Cloud Service Providers, Industry Solution Vendors and Global System Integrators across the full IBM portfolio of Hardware, Software and Services. Prior to this role David was General Manager for IBM's business in Central and Eastern Europe - part of IBM's European Unit - where he was responsible for 29 countries including Russia/CIS, Poland and Baltics, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and the remaining Adriatic region. Central to this role was to lead all sales across the IBM portfolio, integrating the teams and bringing value to IBM's clients and Business Partners across this region. Previously David was the Vice President of sales for IBM’s channel organization in the Growth Markets region, including Greater China, India/South Asia, Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe. David led the end to end operations of IBM’s channel business, from strategy to execution. He was responsible for IBM’s business controls, deal making, helped shape IBM’s image in the market through press and analysts and led a team of IBM employees and IBM’s Business Partners.

Nikolay Nikiforov was assigned the role Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation on May 21, 2012. Earlier he took position of Executive Director in the Information Technology Centre of Tatarstan Republic, and later Deputy Prime Minister of Communications in Tatarstan Republic. He has successfully completed a large-scale project on development and integration of electronic government in the Republic of Tatarstan.

Dmitry Peskov was born in Voronezh in 1975. In 1998 graduated from Voronezh State University. In 1999 received an MA in political science from the University of Manchester. Since 2000 worked at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, was responsible for university development strategy. Left the university at the position of the Innovations Director, Deputy Vice-President on science. In 2008 created Metaver, a company that designs new education forms on the suture of education and venture economics. In 2009 became head of Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy. In 2011 became the Director on Young Professionals Direction at Agency for Strategic Initiatives. Member-Expert Council of Government of Russia. Member of the board of trustees of the agency on professional development WorldSkills Russia. Member of the council of Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs on development of young, innovative and small entrepreneurial activity. Head of the work group on Best Professional Practices Support at the Presidential Professional Qualifications Council. Member of the commission on 2020 Innovation Strategy implementation. He is on the Board of Directors at Aeroflot-Russian Airlines PJSC, RVK PSC, boards of trustees for Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics and Support Foundation for Visually and Hearing Impaired. Holds various state awards, including the Order ”For Merit to the Fatherland”, 2nd Degree.

Born in 1970 in Tashkent, in a family of scientists. Holds a B.Sc. degree and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), where he studied from the age of 15. In 1996 Protassov joined Standard & Western Software IT company as a technical specialist and relocated to Singapore. In 2000 Protassov, together with his friends from MIPT, founded a new company, SWsoft. Under his leadership, SWsoft opened a new R&D center in MIPT to begin developing new products. SWsoft grew into two separate companies, Parallels and Acronis, with Protassov being a co-founder of both. Today, these companies are respected market leaders in the field of data protection and server virtualization, with millions of customers worldwide. Up until 2013, Protassov held a position of Senior Vice President of SWsoft (and later, Parallels, when the company was renamed from SWsoft in 2007), supervising R&D, product development, and technological processes within the business.In 2013, Protassov re-focused on Acronis and became a Senior Vice President, responsible for the technical side of business development, product line, and software updates.Protassov holds 71 patents in the area of computer science and server virtualization, and co-authored the container virtualization technology, which has become an integral part of the global cloud today, currently powering over 10 million servers around the world.

Mr. Samsonov graduated from the Russian Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University. At R-Pharm, he spearheads the Department for Preclinical and Clinical Developments. His division is also in charge of registration, pharmacological oversight and medical support in Russia and abroad of original and reproduced biological and synthetic pharmaceutical agents for treating cancer, autoimmune, infection, contagious and heart diseases. Mr. Samsonov worked more than 16 years in executive positions in the pharmaceutical industry: for Bristol-Myers Squibb (Medical Director for Development of Medical Drugs in Central and Eastern Europe, Executive Director for Development of New Medicinal Products in BRIC Nations); for the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis (Director for Research), participating in development of innovative medicinal products and implementing them in clinical practice, including monoclonal antibodies in the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. Mr. Samsonov has significant experience of working with a number of major regulators, such as the Russian Ministry of Health, CFDA (China), Turkish Ministry of Health, EMA, FDA, PMDA and NICE. He participates on a regular basis on specialised advisory panels, speaks at international conferences and has more than 50 publications in scientific journals both in Russia and abroad. He is a member of the working group for medicinal products under the Eurasian Economic Commission and head of the HealthNet market, as part of the National Technological Initiative. Since 2011, he has been expert at the Cluster of Biomedical Technologies Skolkovo.

Ekaterina Solntseva has been working in IT since 1999. She is currently in charge of ABBYY business development all over the world. Ekaterina came to ABBYY in January 2008, to the position of Marketing Advisor to CEO ABBYY Russia. Before July 2008, she had worked at the Russian office as Advisor to the CEO for marketing and then took the position of Director of Mobile Platform Products Department, in charge of developing applications for mobile platforms, marketing and sale of mobile products on the world market. In 2013, ABBYY was included in the TOP 5 developers of mobile apps in Russia in revenue terms (according to the analytical company App Annie). Prior to joining ABBYY, Ekaterina held executive positions in marketing and business development at Yandex, IBS and Medialogy. Ms. Solntseva graduated from the Moscow State University, Physics Department. She holds Master’s degree in Physics and Mathematics. Ekaterina’s hobbies include skiing and exotic travel and she is also engaged in charity projects. She has a daughter.

Andrey N. Terekhov 1971 - graduated from the Mathematics and Mechanics Faculty of Leningrad State University. Received a diploma with honour in the field of Computer Science. 1978 - Ph.D. from Leningrad State University. Thesis: “Synthesis of efficient programs”. 1991 - Professorship, habilitation thesis: “Software technology for real-time embedded systems”. In the same year 1991 founded and became director of State Enterprise “Tercom”. In year 1996 founded and headed Software Engineering Chair of St. Petersburg State University. In year 1998 founded and became CEO of the “Lanit-Tercom Inc”. In 1999 Andrey N. Terekhov is one of the founders Fort-Ross – Saint-Petersburg software developers association. When in 2004 on the base of Fort-Ross the All-Russia association of software developers – RUSSOFT has been created, Andrey N. Terekhov has been selected as its first Chairman of board of directors. Professor Andrey N. Terekhov has more than 80 scientific publications (including 4 books). He is a member of ACM and IEEE.

From 2013 to 2015, Mr. Tikhonov was Director of Corporate Sales at Samsung Electronics Russia, where the Enterprise Business Team division was set up under his supervision. The division’s main activity is to supply the Russian market for integrated solutions in the field of corporate mobility, up-to-date visualisation systems and printing equipment. Prior to January 2013, Mr. Tikhonov directed sales at IBM Corporation Russia/CIS and held the position of Deputy CEO. Still earlier, Andrei spearheaded the Business Consulting Division. He was part of the international advisory IBM Strategy & Change, worked at IBM USA, managed projects at the IBM Corporate Technology team in charge of managing strategic innovation projects. One of Andrei’s projects was IBM Smarter Planet. Mr. Tikhonov joined IBM in 1995 as Unix system architect. Mr. Tikhonov was born in Moscow, 1971. He graduated from the Robotics Department of Bauman Moscow State Technological University, earning his Master’s degree in 1994. After graduating, he continued research work on a post-graduate course in the area of intelligent control systems. In 1999, Mr. Tikhonov earned an MBA degree from Cambridge University, UK.

Kirill is the General Director of SPB TV. He founded the company together with Sebastian-Justus Schmidt in 2007. Today, the company is one of the world's leading providers of end-to-end OTT TV, IP TV and mobile TV solutions for video content delivery to multiscreen devices. The company's user application, SPB TV, is available on all mobile operating systems and its viewing audience has reached 30 million people worldwide. Previously, Kirill was Director of the Economics and Finance Directorate for the independent non-profit organization, TV-Novosti. Prior to TV-Novosti, he was Deputy Minister of Press Radio and Television Broadcasting, Deputy General Director for Sales at Lenenergo and Deputy Chairman of All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. Kirill worked and studied in the UK within an intergovernmental programme (corporate governance and finance) and holds a PhD in Physics and Mathematics in Mathematical Cybernetics from St. Petersburg State University.

He was born in 1977 in the Salavat city of the Bashkortostan Republic. In 1999 he graduated with honours from the Mechanical and Mathematic faculty of the Moscow Lomonosov State University. In 2007 he graduated from the entrepreneurship training courses of Harvard Business School (Owner/President Management Program). Before 2001 he had been employed with the Accenture international consulting company where he worked in the IT consulting sphere. In 2001 he founded the AT Consulting company, whose managing partner he is at present. He is in charge of strategic decisions related to the company development, determines financial, marketing and HR policy, and supervises the preparation of new contracts as well as ongoing projects. Sergey Shilov is an expert in strategic consulting and project management methodology, as well as financial and telecommunications industries. During ten years under Mr. Shilov's management AT Consulting became one of the leaders in IT and telecommunications, financial, state, and other sectors market. The company employs more than 1300 people. Among the clients of AT Consulting are the biggest companies of Russia and CIS, such as the Sberbank of Russia, VTB Group, OJSC VimpelCom, Rostelecom, NB TRUST, Alfa-Bank and many others.

Alexander Shulgin was born in May 2, 1977 in Yessentuki in the Stavropol region. Alexander has a degree in Management at the Rostov State University. As a specialist in finance sphere with 13 years of experience in the field of consumer goods, Shulgin has held various financial positions at Coca-Cola Hellenic in 1997 and 2007. In 2007 he was appointed as Chief Financial Officer of Coca-Cola Hellenic representation in Russia. Alexander Shulgin joined the company Yandex as CFO in May 2010. On 1st September 2014, Alexander Shulgin was appointed as General Director of "Yandex".