Vision Solutions Starts Independent User Group in Russia

Published: April 13, 2009

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The AS/400, with a little help from a company once known as JD Edwards, got a pretty early and strong toehold in the oil and gas industry, and thanks to IBM, Jack Henry, and a number of other application providers, established a pretty strong showing in international and regional banking. And with the economies of Eastern Europe, Russia, and other parts of the former Soviet Union growing at a pretty healthy clip for the past decade, it comes as no surprise that i platform sales have shown growth in this region of the globe.

And it is therefore no surprise at all that high availability software maker Vision Solutions is therefore setting up an independent user group in Russia. The group, which will be comprised of local customers and business partners. Alexander Kazakov, the IT department manager from Alfa Bank, was elected as the first chairman of the Vision Solutions User Group in Russia.

"Vision Solutions software is a strategic component of our IT operations and we all will benefit from sharing innovative ideas and practices with other regional businesses using Vision's technology," said Kazakov in a statement announcing the formation of the group. "We are eager to invite and learn from key industry leaders attending our events."

Vision Solutions hopes to expand the group to include customers and partners from other countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States, starting with Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the Ukraine.

"For more than 10 years, Vision Solutions has actively increased our presence in Russia and this group is a natural progression of our growth as well as an effective way to communicate with users," says Alexander Trekin, director of sales at the company for the Russian and CIS regions. "We hope to attract top industry speakers to the group on a regular basis and we value the opportunity to share our latest developments with others."

The good thing about this user group, as opposed to more generic ones, is that it will focus on what these customers are interested in: high availability on the i platform, perhaps with a smattering of AIX and Linux. Most user groups go broad in terms of topics to try to attract the largest possible number of members, and therefore they struggle with depth. But this one, like the AS/400 Large User Group (LUG) I told you about at the beginning of the year that is comprised of some of the largest and most complex i shops in the world, might be the harbinger of things to come in terms of user groups. For most i shops, Web forums, online technical and strategic newsletters, and relationships with their resellers are about all they need in terms of contact with other users and experts to help them in their day-to-day jobs. But a user group with a pinpoint topic that is addressed by local peers on an ad hoc basis is probably all they really have time for.

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