The new stage in information technology development means that the previous approaches towards selecting IT solutions need to be reviewed. The IT-systems market is changing dramatically and is providing more and more options for attaining long-standing business goals: greater management flexibility and cutting costs.

The participants in the General Meeting, which was held as part of the XV International Conference “Information Technologies for Rail Transport”, discussed the promising areas for IT development on railway transport, the methods for enhancing efficiency by using IT in the rail sector, the strategic choices among the most state-of-the-art IT solutions, and international experience in carrying out innovative projects in the transport sector and adjacent industries.

The meeting was moderated by Yevgeny Aksenov, Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation (School of IT Management). The participants included: Sergey Dyachenko, General Director of Market Visio/Gartner; Maxim Kazak, Editor-in-Chief of CNews; Vadim Vokhmyanin, First Deputy Head of the IT and Corporate Management Processes Department of Russian Railways; Enzo Marzilli, Director of Regulations, Standards, Developments & Homologation, Rete Ferroviaria Italiana; Peter Stohr, Sales Director, Corporate Services Department, HP CEE; Vladimir Gabriel, Head of Expert Team in Russia, Microsoft; and Yury Karadjov, Business Development Director, Transport, IBM CEE.

During a presentation at the General Meeting, Vadim Vokhmyanin said that Russian Railways’ main IT development goals were improving the management system and its efficiency, expanding business opportunities and achieving strategic management objectives, as well as aligning the medium-term IT development plan with the business strategy.

Following the General Meeting, the conference was divided into four sections. Section 1, Optimizing the IT Space of a Transport Enterprise, focused on the impact of chief trends in current IT development on the role of IT in companies, the key factors in reducing processor capacity costs, the new computer form factors and cloud computing, as well as the role of IT in large businesses and its contribution to radical changes going on in business processes.

The IT infrastructure of any large, modern company, including Russian Railways, needs to be seen as a complex, multi-level structure that includes various layers of equipment and automated systems, as well as IT specialists who are an integral part of this structure. Therefore, optimising IT infrastructure involves a review of the very approaches to building IT landscapes, virtualising computing resources and data storage systems, developing cloud computing and thin clients, consolidating automated systems, changing the processes of using equipment and automated systems, and providing IT services.

Section 2, Software and Integration Platforms, featured a presentation by Igor Movchikov, Chief Technologist of the Main Computing Centre, Russian Railways. He pointed out that restructuring Russian Railways requires a radical change in the chief technological processes being used in the rail sector, as well as the existing management system. Such enormous changes are impossible without a proper restructuring of Russian Railways’ IT systems, which are a key support tool for making decisions based on using information warehouses and technologies for analytical information processing.

Yevgeny Mikheev, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Abitekh Power Supply Systems for Communication Centres, stated at Section 3 that developing microprocessing hardware and installing new kinds of communications equipment will require a new approach to building power supply systems for communication centres. He also suggested a new power supply system that fully meets all requirements.

The main themes discussed at Section 4, Wireless Communication Technologies on Railway Transport, were: using the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GLONASS) to resolve technological problems on rail transport; interaction between wireless communications networks that use different standards; wireless technologies for high-speed railway transport and the hands-on experience of their application.

Infotrans-2010 is paramount for IT development in the rail sector, Valery Vishnyakov, Director of the Main Computing Centre, a Russian Railways branch, said in an interview with RZD TV. Yet another sign of the conference’s importance has been the presence of Vladimir Yakunin, Russian Railways President. When the first Infotrans conference was held 15 years ago, the participants discussed only the possibility of building an IT system. Now they are talking about using promising IT solutions in technological processes, such as the system for centralised processing of the train driver’s route and calculating locomotive teams’ salaries, a comprehensive system for rail infrastructure maintenance, various mobile solutions for executives’ automated workstations (ARM-R), as well as the technology for electronic document management.