Vladimir Yakunin, President of JSCo Russian Railways (RZD), gave the welcoming speech to the event’s participants and guests: “First of all, I would like to congratulate the partners, participants, guests and organisers on this jubilee, fifteenth anniversary conference.”

“The Infotrans - Information Technologies for Rail Transport conference has become a traditional place for Russian and other IT specialists to meet, sum up the year’s results, exchange views on the latest problems and outline current and future plans”, Vladimir Yakunin said. “I am convinced that this jubilee conference will be a reliable practical tool for co-ordinating the efforts of all participants on the transport market towards effective development.”

In his speech during the plenary session, Alexey Illarionov, Head of the Department for Informatisation and Corporate Governance Processes of JSCo Russian Railways, told the participants about the main spheres and results of IT development within JSCo RZD: the architecture of information management systems has been integrated and consolidated, IT service management processes have been introduced on an ITIL platform, and work is now fully recorded, thus making it possible to control IT service costs. 

The first and second floors of the Holiday Inn Moscow Gates hosted the Infotrans-2010 exhibition of industry achievements, the exhibitors including Hitachi Data Systems, Cisco, ARS, TWEMA, Bentley Systems, MIIT, Pulsar-Telecom, Aerospace Technologies, Digital Design, Technoserv, TransTeleKom, SAS, OTsRV, OLLY and JSCo RZD.

The Opening Ceremony and visit to the Infotrans-2010 exhibition were followed by a plenary discussion with the following participants: Ilya Massukh, Deputy Minister for Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, Gennady Petrakov, Head of the Federal Railways Agency, Alexey Illarionov, Head of the Department for Informatisation and Corporate Governance Processes of JSCo Russian Railways, Pyotr Manevich, General Director of Central Communications Station -- subsidiary of JSCo Russian Railways, Valery Vishnyakov, Director of Chief Computer Centre - subsidiary of JSCo Russian Railways, Nazip Galikeyev, Head of the North-West Customs Authority, and Yelena Kunayeva, General Director of Centre for Internal Transport Services - subsidiary of JSCo RZD. The moderator was Prof. Andrei Korotkov, who holds the chair in business process management systems at the School of IT-Management of the Agricultural Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation.

After lunch, the participants continued their work in four sections. Section No. 1 focused on IT-interaction between transport market participants, with the discussion centering on optimisation of interaction between information systems in the industry, improvement of information exchange between JSCo RZD and transport market participants, electronic execution of documents, creation of an electronic trading floor, development of stock markets, information and legal support for electronic interaction within the industry.

The discussions were moderated by Yelena Kunayeva, General Director of Centre for Internal Transport Services - subsidiary of JSCo RZD and Vadim Vokhmyanin, Senior Deputy Head of the Department for Informatisation and Corporate Governance Processes of JSCo Russian Railways.

The topic of Section No. 2 was the structuring and development of the ICT infrastructure of transport enterprises. The moderators were: Maxim Kazak, Head of CNews Analytics, Denis Kalinin, General Director of IBS_DataFort and Andrei Konusov, General Director of LETA.

Within the scope of Section No. 3, Sergei Adadurov, General Director of JSCo NIIS, Evgeny Subbotin, General Director of GiproTransSvyazSignal, Dmitry Pavlov, Chief Engineer of the Giprotranssignalsvyaz project, Dmitry Ananyev, General Director of Pulsar Telekom, Artyom Drozhzhin, Cisco Systems Executive Manager for work with JSCo RZD, Ilya Amiantov, GK Sodruzhestvo, and Mikhail Bukhovtsev, Business Development Director of Huawei Technologies, discussed aspects of telecommunications in railway technological processes and provision for interoperability of transportation.

As those taking part in Section No. 4 noted, one of the main tasks involved in organising communications on the railways today is to build a unified, effective, reliable and easily managed communications system. Creation and structuring of a unified communications system capable of transmitting data at high speeds will promote a considerable rise in both the safety and the volume of passenger and industrial freight carriage. 

Let us note that the XV International Conference “Information Technologies for Rail Transport” is being held at the Holiday Inn, St. Petersburg, from October 26 to 29 2010. The general partner of the event is JSCo Russian Railways and it is supported by CNews. The organiser is the company Business Dialogue.