The experts in the article include the team of the "Wide-profile distribution" division in MERLION company.
This year, the theme of the CRN/RE rating was "folk art". Those who closely follow the changes in the best regional companies list noticed that each rating is in one way or another timed to the theme of the year. In 2018 it was the FIFA World Cup, in 2019 - a theatrical review. There were parallels with ecology and cinema. The editors decided to stick to the tradition this time and dedicated the rating to folk art.
This year, the rating is published 13 times (the first survey was conducted in 2001, and it was called the “Top 25 Regional IT Company Managers” at that time). The IT market has changed a lot over the past 20 years.
Our sector of the economy has experienced many changes over the past 20 years due to both internal and external factors. We will not list them all as they are all well-known. The only thing worth noting is that each such "change" in itself can change the balance of power within the region. What can we say about a situation when they (changes) go on continuously or even coincide. It would seem that recent years' events should "thin out" the Russian IT market and, first of all, cripple regional companies. But, as the results of the current study show, the changes in the list of finalists (compared to the results of 2019) were not as significant as one might have expected: most of the 2019 laureates are well known and take part not only in local IT festivals but also in gala concerts of all-Russian scale: they have repeatedly, in different years, been recognized as the best in the regional ratings of our edition.
But, as these results show, new talented teams (both in terms of doing business and the technologies being mastered and offered) are stepping on the heels of the stage veterans. And they, as is the case at real colorful festivals, do not want to go on stage with one pass number all the time. They strive to get into the number of collectives that gather stadiums, perform not only in mixed concerts, but also create independent full-fledged programs. They are looking for new forms of embodiment of folk art where the stage heroes of the past years will no longer have be welcome.
But so far, the majority at our IT festival is occupied by those to whom the audience is already accustomed. No matter how market newcomers try to break into established partnerships, in most cases vendors and distributors vote for teams that have been proven over the years. Although it should be noted that this time seven companies not mentioned in the final list of last year were nominated for the "Best Regional IT Company". Moreover, only three of them became winners of this rating in previous years (until 2019). Perhaps, this also happened because the preliminary list of applicants was updated by almost 10% this year2 (by including companies recommended by our experts in 2019 and excluding "unreliable” partners from it). Recall that in 2019, there were six “new” companies in the final table (all of them turned out to be newcomers who had never been among the finalists before).
Congratulations to the winners!
As in all previous ratings, this year we did not set the task of ranking the winners by the number of votes they received, so they are listed in alphabetical order in the final list. Despite this, we traditionally want to mention those companies that received the largest number of expert votes. It should be reminded that only once (in 2013) during the entire period of the rating was the gap between one of the winners and its pursuers more than convincing: Arsenal+, which received 37 votes, overtook its closest pursuer mentioned in 29 questionnaires.
But since then, no finalist has managed to repeat such a success. Moreover, since 2015, the dispute over whom the experts will give the largest number of votes has been conducted by two companies: either IC-El-KPO VS (Kazan) bypasses its closest pursuer, Office World of KM (Rostov-on-Don), or the representative of the Southern Federal District gains more votes than colleagues from the Volga region. In a word, the severity of the struggle for the top lines of the rating has decreased: all the same players, all in the same places. True, last year, the difference in the number of votes collected by these companies increased to three. But today, everything is back to normal. No one intervened in the dispute between the leaders: moreover, now they are separated from each other by only one vote.
Also, I would like to especially note one current finalist - Arsenal+. In 2020, it was recognized as "Best" for the 13th time (out of 13 possible!), while the rest of the "performers" had no more than 11 victories.
And, of course, a few words must be said about the new participants in our festival. We have as many as seven finalists who were not included in the previous rating's final list. At the same time, four companies - Softline (office in the Central Federal District, Voronezh), Kvarton (Cheboksary), Technomax-Krasnoyarsk (Krasnoyarsk), and Center (Kazan) - have not previously appeared in the final lists of our rating.
The remaining three companies - Aldo (Krasnoyarsk), GS-Ti Samara (Samara), IVS (Perm) - have already become winners in different years.
It is pleasant to note that three out of six newcomers of the last festival - F5group (Novosibirsk), Zeon (Izhevsk), Peremena (Voronezh) - managed to stay in the list of the best folk groups in 2020.
As for the territorial distribution of prize-winners, this year, representatives of 19 cities became winners (Barnaul, Volgograd, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Izhevsk, Kazan, Krasnoyarsk, Lipetsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Perm, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, Tyumen, Ulan-Ude, Ufa, Khabarovsk, Cheboksary, Yaroslavl). At the same time, two cities can be safely called the "homeland of talents". The list of winners includes three folk groups from Novosibirsk and Samara. As in the overall standings for 20 years, the Volga Federal District has a clear advantage - 11 out of 27 current finalists work in this region.
Of course, our choice of the "best" (as, indeed, almost any research based on expert opinion) may raise objections. And we fully admit that this time not all worthy groups took part in the festival. But the concert program often and mainly depends on who is responsible for its formation. Therefore, every time we strive to attract representatives of different business areas as experts. But it is merely impossible to interview all vendors and distributors working in the Russian IT market. And not only because there are too many of these companies, but also because a significant part of them simply cannot act as experts. After all, our competition is, first of all, a channel research, and it is quite logical that we are interested in the assessments of the “leaders” of the sales channel, that is, companies working with a large number of partners. Therefore, even highly professional, talented, but highly specialized IT teams, of course, have a chance to be among the participants of the festival, but very small. And this is easy to explain - a lot more experts are familiar with wide-profile and multi-vendor companies.
It is also worth noting that some applicants were only two or three votes short of the coveted title of "Best Regional IT Company". Therefore, as before, we will name those companies (in alphabetical order) that received more than a quarter of the votes of our experts, but were not among the winners (see the table "Potential of the Russian market"). This year, 11 companies could become real contenders for victory. Among them are the finalists of the previous CRN/RE ratings, and companies that have approached the cherished milestone but have not overcome it, and those that have never been mentioned even in the lists of “Potential of the Russian IT market”. We hope that there are winners for future years among them.
Full version of the article, rating methodology, winners: https://www.crn.ru/numbers/reg-numbers/detail.php?ID=147699
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From lezginka to Vologda lace: rating experts on the realities of the Russian IT market
Once a year, we organize a large-scale and representative festival of folk art "The 25 Best Regional IT Companies". For the thirteenth time now, rating experts, vendors, and distributors working in the Russian IT market help us in this. And who else but them knows better than others how things are with the "people's collectives". Therefore, we asked them to answer the following questions:
The team of the Wide-Profile Distribution Division, MERLION:
1-2. If we talk about folk art, national heritage, then the first associations that are appropriate here to recall in relation to our industry business processes and interactions with partners are Vologda lace, Orenburg downy shawl. This is manual and painstaking work, and in case of mistakes the craftswomen often have to dissolve everything and create the product anew. You hesitate a little with such mistakes, and your neighbor will have her own downy shawl ready. All the craftswomen (our partners) have reached different levels of professionalism in "knitting" and "weaving" - some are skilled, and they quickly manually release and sell their product, someone automated the workshop and applies new technologies (machine tools purchased or a newer tool).
It is more difficult for modern craftswomen now than in the recent past as consumers' demands for the product and the quality of the material used are growing. Not all lacemakers can stand it; some leave to sculpt pots from scrap materials. And those who make high-quality scarves or lace from the latest raw materials are always respected by their fellow countrymen. And as a result, someone turns out very beautifully, someone does not, but at the same time, the whole country wears laces and scarves created by our partners.
Colleagues working in the telecom segment have radically different associations. Spectacular breakdance in which a dancer of excellent physical shape does not always simple acrobatic movements - this is what the highly dynamic jerks up and down, left and right, occurring in the industry, can be compared to. All partners working with such products are very advanced, they are top class dancers by their energy. And in modern market realities, suppliers (distributors and vendors) really "fight" for them - they follow their performances on stage, actively applaud, and fall asleep with flower bouquets (meaning various preferences in cooperation). However, both partners and us, distributors, have room to grow and improve, because all of us may have our own Olympiad (breakdance is included in the program of the Olympic Games-2024).
The full version of the article with answers from all experts is here.
Read all rating materials on the CRN website.
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