OREANDA-NEWS. October 27, 2010. “PingWinFest 2010: Open Source Software Ecosystem Today and Tomorrow”, the first Russian Open Source Software Solutions festival was held on October 20th, 2010 in Moscow and gathered about 200 participants from more than 20 Russian cities.

As expected, this event, primarily focused on applied solutions for corporate sector based on Open Source Software, became a gathering place for experts of the IT market.

Marat Guriev, IBM East Europe/Asia, GP executive, launched the festival with a short welcome speech and presented a summary report on international positioning of countries and companies involved in the Open Source Software market, providing interesting ratings and different research data. He highlighted the tight liaison between the coverage level of Open Source Software with existing government programs, educational systems at schools and universities and the demand addressed by business and society to these technologies. It appears to Mr. Guriev that Russia has a good chance to reach top global ratings for those countries that are actively employing Open Source Software and he sees a great perspective in implementation of government programs and increase of demand in domestic Open Source Software technologies for business, public administration and other sectors.

Dmitry Komissarov, PingWin Software, CEO, presented on large Open Source Software projects implemented in Russia in recent years. He paid special attention to the analysis of the most common misconceptions; that it is impossible to switch completely (100%) to Open Source Software, that Open Source Software doesn’t mean free of charge, and finally, that it is impossible to use Open Source Software effectively at every location. Among the advantages of Open Source Software Mr. Komissarov sees scalability (without additional license fees), high level of information security, independence from specific solution and service suppliers, as well as flexibility and high adaptability (due to open source code).

Tagir Yapparov, I.T. Co., CEO, presented on the development milestones of the Open Source Software market and overviewed existing business solutions, as well as provided information on key drivers of the Open Source Software applications market and highlighted such factors as: development of functional platforms based on Open Source Software, economic/business demand, improvement of development quality, enhancement of personnel support and training systems, maturity increase of the Open Source Software market. Mr. Yapparov also provided information on market constraining factors. In his opinion it deals with limited marketing of Open Source Software applications, insufficient attention paid to functionality, legal constraints, lack of local support, as well as the ability to use alternative software.

Pavel Frolov, LinuxCenter, CEO, summarized market results achieved in Russia during the last decade. He referred to the research data published at OpenNet.Ru portal and provided market evaluation for 2009 (2.2 billion rubles) and forecast for the upcoming years (5 billion rubles in 2012). According to Mr. Frolov’s observations, presently Open Source Software is mainly demanded by security agencies, followed by government enterprises, public health services, educational and financial institutions, commerce and manufacturing.

The panel discussion that followed turned to be one of the brightest moments of the festival. It gathered not only speakers who were sitting in the presidium but also the group that joined it later and was represented by Viktor Ivannikov (RASPO, Chairman), Igor Ashmanov (Ashmanov and Partners, Managing Partner) and Mikhail Elashkin (Elashkin Research, CEO), as well as other participants of this event. This format allowed the participants to consider different points of view, to ask different questions and, what is even more important, to receive satisfactory answers. The conversations started during the panel discussion were followed by private talks. The panel discussion was broadcast via the Internet and could be followed by anyone who showed interest in it.

The final section of “PingWinFest” was dedicated to services and solutions based on Open Source Software. The representatives of BOSS-Referent, LinuxCenter, PingWin Software, Aplana Software and Municipal State Financed Organization “Education support center” took part in this section. 

The festival was accompanied by the Open Source Software exhibition represented by 14 Open Source Software developers and suppliers, as well as service providers from different Russian regions.

The festival was organized by I.T. Co., Russian system integrator, together with PingWin Software, leader of the Open Source Software market, and in partnership with LinuxCenter, Aplana and Lenovo.

Information support was provided by such magazines as “CIO: Chief Information Officer”, “Open Systems. DBMS”, Linux Format and “System Administrator”, information and analytical publication  IT News , ComputerWorld Russia and PCWeek/RE weekly publications, ComNews.ru and nixp.ru portals, Russian analytical agency Tadviser, and “iOne. Information technologies.”

“Already now we can state that “PingWinFest 2010” justified our hopes. I personally believe that the participants received an objective overview of Open Source Software development trends both for Russia and worldwide, - Dmitry Komissarov, said. – I would also like to say that the festival helped us to gather representatives from many regional companies, to exchange opinions on current local problems, to better understand existing challenges and to plan joint activities to promote Open Source Software across the country. We, as one of the festival's organizers, are fully satisfied with the results and hope that we will be able to do it even better next year.   We are not going to be satisfied with what has already been achieved!”