Interview with the CIO of the Russian Railway Evgeny Charkin

Evgeny Charkin: Really, a lot of things are made. Now the IT landscape of the company needs to be harmonized, correctly to build in the management plan development of functionality, its optimization. The matter is that often information systems in large corporation are under construction and develop on a functional vertical. My task – to provide integration of a huge number of the IC into a whole, having harmonized an IT landscape. It is connected, in particular, with the fact that a part of the IC became outdated, they need to be replaced, also many other things are reasonable to transfer some functionality to other ICs, including for the purpose of import substitution.

From essentially new directions of improvement of the corporate IC Russian Railway – total mobility, and both external – for passengers, and internal, for the staff of the Russian Railway. For example, mobile jobs for the operational personnel working at infrastructure – inspectors and repairmen, as well as for managerial mobility – mobile document flow, leaving from a traditional format of meetings.

Evgeny Charkin: At the end of February of this year there was a client application under Android, it is laid already out in Google Play from where it it is possible to download, set and use for acquisition of tickets on the website of the Russian Railway. In the next plans – to lick into shape the interface in respect of ergonomics, to provide multiplatformity of the solution and also to expand functionality. Already now the application allows not only to buy tickets, but also to look at the train schedule. In the future the number of additional services which can be received at stations and in trains by means of the personal mobile device will increase.

Evgeny Charkin: Such systems are now, and they will remain in the near future. The matter is that processes of transportation of passengers and loads are unique from the point of view of management. And technologists outside the Russian Railway, capable it is competent to set the task to developers of specialized software, simply is not present. Therefore without the self-written systems, i.e. not to do without software created by the programmers working in the system of the Russian Railway in cooperation with our technologists.

Evgeny Charkin: This system partially covers the ERP system and the data warehouse (Business Warehouse) today, and yields good results. In the context of a course towards development of domestic technologies need for substitution is available, but a problem that in the Russian IT market upon in this area domestic solutions are absent. In particular taking into account the scale of tasks which are required to be solved in case of the Russian Railway, and complex approach – here both analysts, and economy, and a transaction system, and the personnel.

Evgeny Charkin: Now in Yekaterinburg the reserve DPC is under construction, its commissioning is scheduled next year. After that it is going to complete transfer of capacities from present regional data centers in three main - Moscow, St. Petersburg and Ekaterinburg.

Evgeny Charkin: The decision on transition from SAP to domestic developments is not made. But we really study the domestic systems of 1C and Galaktika to estimate as far as they can satisfy the Russian Railway technology and in respect of scale, in our system more than 200 thousand work human. Cases of implementation and operation of domestic ERP systems of the same scale are unknown to me.

The second important point – need of return of investments. A system based on SAP works since the end of the 90th, essential means which should bring significant return are spent for it. And the SAP product was created taking into account experience of the largest world companies therefore meets the requirements of such large corporation as the Russian Railway. Therefore we, certainly, will look towards the Russian producer, the Russian technologies need to be developed, but we will act very attentively and carefully.

For making decision that Russian software will be able to work at an IT landscape of the Russian Railway at our loadings and scale, it is necessary to hold detailed testing and the analysis. We now are also engaged in it - test stands at which stress, functional testing of the Russian developments is executed are created. The decision on the potential of the Russian developments, its sufficiency for requirements of the Russian Railway, will be accepted together with our functional customers, i.e. Russian Railway business divisions.

Evgeny Charkin: For today the special coordination council in which work representatives of IT services and business participate is created. On this council all projects in the field of automation are considered and affirm, priorities in their implementation are placed.

Evgeny Charkin: Internal SLA are available, but so far they the general character, and define integrated availability of IT resources, a response time on the address of the user and some other the moments. In our plans to contact directly functional customers with the conclusion of different SLA, depending on specifics of specific division of customer company. And one more initiative which we are going to implement in the future – to create group on quality control of providing IT services.