Technoserv has become a Skolkovo partner, signing a deal that compels Russia’s largest IT systems integrator to create an R&D center on the territory of the innovations hub.
Technoserv, which recorded a total turnover of more than 40 billion rubles in 2013, will base up to 150 of its 2,000 employees at the center, where construction begins this year.
“We believe that one of the IT sector’s most promising areas of development is in creating niche tech applications that are aimed at the specific demands of our clients’ businesses,” said Alexei Ananyev, the chairman of the Technoserv Group’s advisory board.
“It is in this area that we intend to work with the Skolkovo Foundation,” he added. At Skolkovo, the Technoserv team will also develop biometric identification systems, among other things.
The company installs, develops and outsources IT infrastructure, communications, engineering and information security systems, power systems and application platforms. Technoserv’s competencies include IT consulting, business intelligence systems, support and outsourcing.
Skolkovo vice president Igor Bogachev welcomed the addition of a “unique company” with “huge potential” to innovate in the areas of testing and IT security.
“I’m sure that the mentorship support from Technoserv experts will allow resident companies from the IT cluster to create and develop their projects on a qualitatively new level,” added Bogachev, who is the IT cluster’s director.
Technoserv is headquartered in Moscow, with regional offices in Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, St. Petersburg, Khabarovsk, Volgograd, Yekaterinburg. Subsidiaries in the CIS are in Almaty, Baku, Bishkek, Minsk, Tashkent and Yerevan.
The company’s client list comprises major Russian companies and organizations from key sectors of the economy, including telecommunications, the public sector, oil and gas, manufacturing, transport and financial services.
The addition of Technoserv comes a little under a month after Japanese electronics giant Panasonic signed up as a Skolkovo partner.
That agreement, signed in the presence of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, commits Panasonic to deploying at least 30 workers from its Russian representative office at the Skolkovo R&D center by 2017, an operation that will cost the company around 160 million rubles.
Skolkovo’s two-dozen world-leading partners also include Boeing, Cisco Systems, EADS, GE, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Siemens, Nokia and Samsung. Panasonic is Skolkovo’s 45th partner overall.
Partner status allows firms to open up research facilities at Skolkovo and grants access to the Skolkovo ecosystem, giving the company first refusal on innovations produced by Skolkovo’s 1,000-plus resident startups and also better access to the Russian market.