Tomsk, without borders, the industry conference organized by the IT community of Tomsk reached a new level. The eleventh conference City IT will take place within two months –

Tomsk without borders

The industry conference organized by the IT community of Tomsk reached a new level.

The eleventh in a row the Conference “City IT” will take place within two months – the updated format is dictated by an antiviral agenda and (probably, first of all) changes in the structure of the requests of the industry itself. The specifics of the current conference and the general state of affairs in the field of technological business were discussed at the RIA Tomsk agency.

Ruslan Fatikhanov, General Director of Lab365, member of the conference organizing committee

– Last year, a jubilee X conference was held, which showed – many goals that we formed at the very beginning of this path were achieved. Somewhere-for example, in 2015-they were adjusted, however, in general, an increase in the number of trained personnel; and managerial growth of companies expressed in revenue; and the dynamics of the opening of new companies (including branches); And the formation of internal demand for IT – all this, one way or another, has become a reality.

In the process, we realized that the IT industry of the Tomsk region developed so much that for its further active growth in internal demand, it is no longer enough. Therefore, companies were further focused on markets outside the region and outside the country.

Secondly, the industry-as part of the IT industry as a whole-gained quite high growth rates, respectively, an important task arose to preserve them. That is, from us, as the organizers of the conference, it was required to reformat goals and objectives, as well as the proposal of a new format necessary to maintain the pace of development. Obviously, the crisis will be replaced by a period of post -crisis growth for all industries, while we set the task of growing faster than the rest.

When working on a new format, we analyzed the retrospective of the formation of a Tomsk IT industry over the past four years, breaking the company into cohorts depending on the size of their revenue.

Companies with a turnover from zero to 10 million rubles can be attributed to the category of startups, they are actively growing, while someone constantly opens and closes inside the segment. Here we see some quantitative stagnation, so the task is to activate work with such companies, create a startup studio, hubs and so on.

In the segment with revenue from 10 to 100 million, we observe a certain increase in money, for the most part this is due to the personal growth of companies who have learned to adapt and conduct IT business. In a large segment, the number of companies does not change – that is, we need to focus on the task of growing large regional companies.

Tomsk has already been formed as an IT center and in order to grow further, it is necessary to promote the region outside it. Hence the new format of the conference – in many ways “thanks to” the current situation, it will be held throughout the country. At the same time, it is about both online and offline events that will be broadcast to all participants and about industry publications aimed at solving regional problems to position the region outside. That is, the conference itself will consist of approximately 20 events (two in each week) and 15 publications in the publications of the federal level.

If we talk about the growth rate in the industry, then they have changed in the already mentioned 2015 – the nature of the money in the industry changed from the position of costs of investment. The IT industry is not in isolation from the economy, one way or another it works with orders from other sectors. That is, companies began to actively invest in this direction – in new processes, products and in achieving a new level of effectiveness. As a result, the industry annually grew 30–70% depending on the segment. In the crisis period, those whom we managed to interview, the increase is 30–40%.

As for the personnel issue, we are talking about a lack of a wide range of competencies, not only engineering. Partly, the problem was solved due to the fact that companies built in their structure something like internal academies to bring specialists to a certain level. Meanwhile, this year, thanks to the National Project Digital Economy, universities increased the set in specialties associated with IT by 50%. And I can say that the industry has been waiting for this for a very long time.

Also, during the last year’s conference, the question was raised that the industry needs not only engineers, but also in average management. The problem of saturation of the market was discussed with universities and the administration – we proceeded from the fact that the engineering team is being prepared for a long time, and managers can be prepared in three or six months.

As a result, the triple spiral model worked-thanks to the interaction of power, universities and IT business, a dense course was created to prepare average management. The program also works in the offset of the next year, the expectations of which are associated with growth – that is, in this case, a reserve of management composition is formed for the industry. If we talk about the demand for the course, then there were hundreds, about 170 applications reached the consideration, from which 50 budget places had to be selected.

In addition, industries are needed by sales managers, but not in the classical sense of this position – since we are focused on external markets in relation to the market, this specialist should understand the specifics of the region, his language and culture. Well, the most important thing is that he must understand the customer’s business in order to offer the technological solution he needs.

A separate section will be devoted to this issue, however, regardless of its results, we will scale the experience of training sales managers. There are already more than a dozen successful specialists in this field in Tomsk, and we will try to pass on their experience to new colleagues.

Fedor Skvortsov, Development Director of Aurigma, member of the conference organizing committee

– As already mentioned, the conference will consist of about 20 events. We'll discuss how to create new products and technology startups, and successful companies will show you how to build a business that sells solutions and serves customers around the world. In addition, together with other entrepreneurs, representatives of universities, authorities and development institutions, we will discuss the adjustment of the development strategy for the region's IT industry. The industry is really growing, and it is important for us not to lose momentum, especially given the high level of competition for resources that has developed in Russia and the world.

For specialists and engineers, there will be specialized sections on .NET, PHP, Java, UX / UI, frontend and full stack development. We love engineers very much and try to make quality content for them.

The key to the success of a technology company is not only engineers – much depends on the coordinated work of managers and specialists of a different profile. And in general, it is no secret that often in the state of IT companies, engineers occupy less than half of the payroll. That is why the conference will include meetings on system analysis, business intelligence, project management and marketing. The IT industry has become truly fashionable – many, even without a specialized specialty, want to work in an industry with high earnings. And this year we will show one of the ways to enter the industry, this will be the topic of the technology sales meeting.

Andrey Antonov, Deputy Governor of the Tomsk Region for Economics

– A new format has been set, within which the conversation will be about foreign markets and about attracting customer companies and representatives of the IT business in general to the Tomsk Region. They need to be shown exactly how to work here, to interact with our universities, to receive an important resource in the form of young people who want to work in the industry, and so on. Moreover, this position is formed precisely by business, which is very important in itself.

Four years ago, the industry estimated its total revenue at over two billion rubles. At the end of 2019, revenue was already estimated at 8 billion, and in 2020 we expect an increase in this indicator. As they say, every cloud has a silver lining – the situation with the pandemic has forced many to switch to IT solutions and online interaction formats. At the moment, companies are conducting a lot of such developments, that is, the need for digitalization of activities is growing significantly. Accordingly, we, for our part, see an increase in the number of orders on this topic.

A year ago, according to the results of the form U-Novus, we noted interest from companies working with artificial intelligence. In particular, it was about Cognitive Technologies – the Russian leader in the field of artificial intelligence. And last year we witnessed the first field tests of the combine, equipped with a robotic control system from Cognitive Technologies, which was also attended by scientists from Tomsk.

In early September – that is, despite the situation with pandemia, the company opened in Tomsk the production of control systems for combines with artificial intelligence. The annual volume of the output of such agropylots is still a thousand units, however, the factory has the task of reaching the volume of production of up to ten thousand devices per year in the next year. The main sales markets are now South America, China and the USA, while the company continues to actively promote its decisions in the Russian regions – including in the Tomsk region. It is noteworthy that the production was opened in a premises previously occupied by the restaurant Workshop No. 10. The liberated areas were located in the area of ​​South Square, while in the company they wanted to place production closer to students studying in specialized specialties.

Also this year we saw a noticeable increase in the number of employees of companies, as well as IT units opened in Tomsk by the structures of the federal and international levels. It is, for example, about the SIBURCHENSENT, the international group of SIDENIS companies, units of the Central Bank and the military insurance company. Currently, groups for digitalization and use of artificial intelligence in the field of nuclear medicine are being worked out – this is a joint project of TPU and the group of companies Medinvestgroup.

With all this, three years ago, many were quite wary of the idea of ​​opening IT units of large companies here. In particular, it was said that this is the risk of competition from the point of view of employees, salaries and other things. However, time showed that this should not be afraid – from open units from 800 to 1,000 (estimates here vary) jobs were created, and they did not bring down the market.

With all this, we have a lack of specialists in the industry, with our IT communities we are working out various programs to train personnel of the desired level. More recently, as already mentioned, a program for the preparation of middle -level project managers was launched.

Various developments associated with youth are also underway. Together with universities and IT companies, an accelerator called TomSkhub was created-about a thousand people are selected in it, and according to the results of this year, we expect about 50 startups. Last year there were about 30, now we believe that we can improve this indicator.

Accordingly, all our regional infrastructure works for these tasks.This year, a branch of Skolkovo appeared as an addition to it, and it is territorially located in the SEZ. And at the moment we-together with the IT community and consortium of universities-are discussing the issue of filling this infrastructure, what needs to be supplemented. The goal is to make it a certain center in the field of 5G, artificial intelligence and other breakthrough technologies.

Photo: sites City IT, administration of the Tomsk region, personal pages in social networks