Russia will form a new military branch responsible for cybersecurity by the end of 2013, news agency RIA Novosti reported last week, citing an unnamed source in the Ministry of Defense. Among the main tasks of the cyber troops will be data monitoring and processing, as well as dealing with cyber threats. The first steps …
Russia’s Ministry of Defense to create “cyber troops” Read More
The Ministry of Communications and Mass Media is planning to finance the creation of up to 50 R&D centers in the IT segment in Russia in the next five years, Digit.ru reported in late June. During the International Economic Forum in Saint Petersburg, Deputy Minister Mark Shmulevich said that by 2014 the first 7-10 centers to …
Russia’s Ministry of Communications to fund up to 50 IT R&D centers Read More
Skolkovo, the international tech hub nearing completion on the outskirts of Moscow, and Accenture, the global consulting and outsourcing company, have agreed to establish the Accenture Center for the development of predictive analytics solutions at Skolkovo. Under the current plans, the Accenture center will start its work next month and reach its planned capacity by …
Accenture teams up with Skolkovo to develop predictive analytics Read More
“I want to assure you on behalf of the Kremlin and the government of the Russian Federation that Skolkovo is here to stay, it is our strategic course, and there can be no changes there,” the Russian news agency ITAR TASS quoted Sergey Ivanov, the Russian president’s chief of staff, as saying last week. “Individual scandalous …
RVC, the Russian government’s fund of funds for innovation, and GK Pilot, a leading local systems integrator, have co-invested in “FABRIKA,” an IT park in the southern Russian city of Astrakhan. RVC’s involvement comes through its tributary Infrafund, which is dedicated to financing infrastructure initiatives throughout the country. The investment amount has not been disclosed, …
State-owned fund RVC co-invests in Astrakhan IT Park Read More
The Russian Government has decided to compel large domestic corporations controlled by the state to buy Russian technologies. Under a government decree signed earlier this month, a special “roadmap” is expected to ease business suppliers’ access to the procurement programs of Russia’s largest state-owned corporations – including such large ones as Gazprom, Rosneft, Russian Railways, Rosatom, …
Medvedev’s Cabinet compels state-owned corporations to buy Russian technology Read More
The Russian venture fever hit the Tomsk region in Siberia last week with the announced launch of a regional seed-stage fund. The new fund is expected to focus on the support of technology developments across the region’s innovation production clusters and in local academia. The fund will operate as an Open Investment Society (in Russian: …
Tomsk’s new VC fund to back seed-stage efforts in business and academia Read More
Two Russian ministries are expected to jointly create and help fund a network of IT-focused scientific and research centers at Russia’s leading universities, industry portal ComNews.ru reported last week. The Ministry of Education and Science will lead the effort, while the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications will back the move by liaising with the …
Russia moves to foster closer ties between IT business and academia Read More
In a bid to anticipate and curtail misdemeanors potentially originating from Russia’s social networks and blogosphere, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has launched an open tender for IT solutions that would enable investigators to do so. The Committee, responsible for investigations of particularly important cases of crimes against individuals, public safety, the national …
Russian authorities to scan social networks and blogosphere for crime threats Read More
Rosinfocominvest, a government fund set up to invest in IT and telecom projects, is shortly expected to recommence its operations as a co-investor in IT startups, after six years of virtual inactivity, the Russian Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications announced earlier this week. When it was launched in 2008 with as much as 2.9 …
Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved changes to the federal law on governmental policies in the field of science and technology, which emphasize that innovative activities must be supported not only on the federal, but also on the regional level. According to the legislation, “support for innovation activities” is defined as a “set of measures …
President Putin: Russian regions must support innovation Read More
“Coercion to innovation” – a term coined by the Russian business media for the Medvedev cabinet’s policy of incentivizing Russian state-controlled businesses and overcoming their general non-receptiveness to modernization – has produced little result, and it is government coffers, not corporate ones, that have paid for most revamping. This is how Mikhail Gershman, a senior …
Russia’s state-controlled companies shy away from investing in R&D Read More
