Released on = July 10, 2007, 8:20 am

Press Release Author = Vica Vinogradova

Industry = Software

Press Release Summary = St. Petersburg, Russia, July 10, 2007. DataArt, a high-end
software development company, hosted St. Petersburg Dialogues Symposium which
brought together renowned international speakers from the IT industry, and
commemorated the company's 10 years in business.



Press Release Body = The Symposium, held at one of St. Petersburg historical
mansions, showcased a distinguished group of prominent technologists from around the
world who discussed the most imperative issues of global sourcing, innovation and
technology today.



Jamie McLellan, CIO for Europe, Africa and Middle East at Ogilvy, opened the
Symposium with a presentation Deploying Technology for a Global Company: Innovation
and Change Management, outlining Ogilvy's success in managing 497 offices in 125
countries supporting more than 2,300 clients, and over 14,000 employees worldwide.
According to McLellan, the global challenge is managing needs & wants as well as
expectations concerning IT, which in turn brings the issue of affordability and
compatibility. According to McLellan, demand generation, consumerism and evolution
are the key drivers for innovation.



Alexei Miller, Executive Vice President at DataArt, the host organization, described
the evolution of software outsourcing industry through the prism of DataArt's 10
year history. The path from generic software work in the late-90s, fuelled by
internet technologies boom and sobered by the following crash, the industry as a
whole has taken a more mature, quality-driven position. DataArt continues to
innovate, building itself as a high-end provider of "expertise-based outsourcing"
services. Miller covered two major trends which will affect the industry in the next
decade: (1) the changing vendor landscape - the shift from all-India strategy to
global multi-sourcing, involving emerging geographies such as Eastern Europe and (2)
the shift in the risk/responsibility equation; whereby vendors take on more
responsibility and move from staff augmentation to application outsourcing service
model. DataArt sees itself as an "enabler" - a vendor that helps companies use these
trends to use global resources for tasks that were previously thought not suitable
for outsourcing.



Dr. Christian Oversohl, Vice President and Head of Sapient Europe, spoke about
managing distributed teams and projects. After listing numerous challenges to an
outsourced project, from lack of executive support, clear business objectives,
process and methodology to user and client management and cultural differences,
Oversohl pointed that the basis for selecting the right offshore partner is the need
to focus on the "real cost of ownership" for offshore projects, not simply cutting
cost as usually thought. Sapient's Global Distributed Delivery Model ensures smooth
bridging of continents and cultures in delivering projects, where a united team and
common methodology are the basis for success, and cultural differences are taken
into consideration.



Jean-Francois Loche, Vice President and CIO of Nissan Europe, made an overview of
his organization\'s broad use of technology outsourcing over the years. He
highlighted the differences in outsourcing approaches by major Nissan divisions -
the U.S., Asia and Europe and described how outsourcing blends in with Nissan core
business planning process. Loche described Nissan IT group\'s BEST value up strategy,
including key components Business Alignment, Enterprise Architecture, Selective
Sourcing and Technology Simplification.



Dr. Gernot Gmelin, Head of Global New Technologies, Technology Architecture and
Strategy at Novartis Pharma AG, presented his company's outlook on changing
technology environment and emerging information security threats. His presentation
included examples of how a large organization such as Novartis educates its
employees and partners on various aspects of information security.



Key not speaker, Mark Minevich, Founder and Executive Chairman of Billion Minds
Foundation discussed globalization. In his presentation, he outlined the mission of
BMF to promote the sustainable development and growth of a global economy of six
billion minds through social knowledge entrepreneurship and socially responsible
investments, and pointed that technology is an important enabler of this mission.



The event also included two panels, The Impact of Technology on Globalization of
Financial Services, moderated by Orest Kyzyk of OMK Associates, and Russia's Role in
Global Innovation, moderated by Heidi Brown, Senior Reporter at Forbes Magazine.



This is the first even of such magnitude hosted by DataArt, and represents the
company's vision for using global resources in high end technology tasks.
Participation of prominent technology executives from around the world reaffirmed
that vision. The company plans to organize the Symposium annually in one of its four
locations worldwide



Web Site = http://www.dataart.com

Contact Details = Media Contact:

Vica Vinogradova

vica@dataart.com

Mobile: +7-906-242-5940