The 2nd International MERLION IT Solutions Summit
The second MERLION IT Solutions Summit 2018 was held on September 5–7 by MERLION, the leading VAD distributor in Russia, and sponsored by global and Russian IT producers. This year, around 50 leading companies partnered with the event. Its Platinum Sponsors were Huawei, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. Premium Partners included Lenovo, Schneider Electric, Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. iRU and Unify were Strategic Partners, while HP Inc. was the event's Technical Partner.
The event was held in a unique, modern building of the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, inspired by the works of avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich.
From September 5–7, the Summit hosted a total of about 1,500 participants, including well-known European and Russian analysts, technical experts, heads of leading global and Russian IT companies (developers and system integrators), as well as corporate IT solution customers.
Aleksey Abramov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of MERLION, addressed partners with a welcoming speech. He expressed the event's collective opinion that only together can the distributors, vendors, and integrators promoting high-tech solutions ensure a bright future in the face of any difficulty. Igor Solntsev, Director of MERLION's VAD Division, added that to be heard by the maximum number of partners in Russia, vendors can use the Summit to express their perspective on how the business models of system integrators and the IT market as a whole are changing.
Francis Lam, Director of IT Solutions, Huawei Enterprise USA, also stressed the importance of effective communication with partners. "Huawei is a global leader in building infrastructure for cloud and smart computing. The company helps accelerate the digital transformation to achieve greater business performance in today's market environment. Russia is a strategically significant market for Huawei. To effectively develop cooperation, we must maintain close contact with our solution users and integrators, who have a profound knowledge of the local market's needs. This summit offers a universal venue for the general public, including both our IT partners and their customers," Francis Lam commented.
During the plenary session, Diego Segre, Vice President of IBM Global Business Partner Europe, further confirmed the significance of personal communication, as well as a willingness to develop interactions on social media, by phone or email, or in other words, in any way most convenient for Russian partners. Diego described the modern world as a unified ecosystem where companies tend to outsource non-core processes/assets and consume resources, technologies and products from one another, which opens the door to new business opportunities.
Predrag Jaksic, Intel's Cloud Service Provider Sales Director in EMEA, noted the rapidly growing potential of the data market, estimated at $220 billion by 2020. Growth in data traffic is accompanied by an uneven IT infrastructure load that fluctuates depending on major events like the Olympic Games or other world championships, or even because of more trivial reasons, such as local weather fluctuations. All this makes the cloud model the optimal choice for any type of business, and Intel is poised to offer a full array of solutions for this market. "Tomorrow will be very cloudy, please dress for the weather," Predrag Jaksic ended his speech in Russian.
The business agenda of the Summit included 54 reports in five clusters:
Leading analysts from GFK, IDC, iKS Consulting and CONTEXT reviewed trends in the global and Russian IT markets. The CONTEXT international analytical agency was represented by its Director Adam Simon, who spoke about the technologies currently changing business processes and people's lives in general. Elena Semenovskaya, Research Director at IDC, spoke about the present and future of smart enterprises. Stanislav Mirin, Lead Consultant, iKS Consulting, shared data on the state of the market of commercial DCs. Andrey Seregin, Senior Consultant, GFK, described the prospects and key trends in today's changing IT market.
Along with business discussions, the Summit also provided technical specialists with a special area to exchange experience. The two demo laboratories at IT Solutions Summit 2018 hosted a total of ten presentations, workshops and solution demonstrations led by technical experts from the largest IT companies.
The EXPO zone at MERLION IT Solutions Summit 2018 featured 44 booths from global and Russian industry leaders showcasing their latest products and advanced technologies. Over 300 business meetings were held during the event.
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