Department of Information of the National Bank of Ukraine and Center for Banking Information Technology hosted the17th International Conference “Banking systems and networks”. The event took place on June 20th-26th in Yalta.

The conference was attended by bank officials of commercial and state banks, representing Ukraine, CIS and foreign countries, leading domestic and foreign suppliers of IT solutions, system integrators, and government employees.

The conference addressed issues that ranged from improved banking efficiency to the companies’ IT management in accordance with international best practices, and implementation of international standards for information security management systems. The format of the conference included both plenary sessions and subject-specific workshops to share experience and expertise of the banking industry.

Miratech was represented by Mykola Royenko, Miratech President, Valeriy Kutsyy, Miratech CEO, Natalia Perestyuk, Director of Business Development, Elena Zhylich, Director of Product Development, and Elena Yablonovska, Key Account Manager. There was a keynote “Outsourcing of IT services in Ukraine, Market Overview” held by Alexey Perekatov, Miratech Vice President, Corporate Marketing.

The conference included keynotes by Miratech’s momentous partners IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. The most interesting presentations were given by IBM and National Bank of Ukraine with a flashback analysis of building ICT infrastructure of the financial institutions and comprehensive outline on ways to improve the banks’ performance through a more active deployment of ITO solutions and the transition to integrated solutions in the field of contact centers. At the conclusion there was a report on the benefits of sharing of IT infrastructure through virtualization technologies. Alexey Perekatov: “Why virtualization? Under a hard-budgeting of IT in their hardware constituent, the leading suppliers in this field whom we work with – Citrix and VMware – enjoy a strong reputation, and it is of daily occurrence.”

The topics of keynote speech by Alexey Perekatov were the need for innovative solutions in the banking sector of Ukraine and how management of banks’ IT resources by instrumentality of third parties can help banks perform better. Herewith Mr. Perekatov emphasized the practical aspects of Miratech’s existing partnerships with such commercial banks of Ukraine as Marine Transport Bank, OTP Bank, Savings Bank of Russia and Swedbank.

Unlike previous years, this year’s event took place against the background of the recession-weary 2009. As its impact on investment development has not yet been fully resolved, observers attribute to it both the fact that IT vendors were having a quantitative edge against bankers and a certain stance of inertia which was to feel in the plenary hall.