Russia’s Skolkovo hi-tech hub and U.S. software giant Microsoft Microsoft, one of the first large companies to announce plans to participate in the Skolkovo project announced plans on Wednesday to boost financing for Russian startup companies. Microsoft and Skolkovo started cooperation in November 2010, when during his visit to Moscow Microsoft head Steve Ballmer and the Skolkovo head Viktor Vekselberg announced the establishment of a joint development center.

Russian companies operating in Skolkovo and qualifying for Microsoft financing will also receive the same amount of funding from Skolkovo, as well as discounts for Microsoft products and Microsoft technical support for free.

The first startup to get joint financing is Russian company Speereo engaged in developing a voice translation system. Under the new initiative, the company will get 1.5 million roubles ($50,000) from Microsoft and the same amount from Skolkovo. Speereo’s voice translation systems will be used in mobile applications, on-board car computers and by call-centers.

The joint development center will help Microsoft maintain its organizational presence in the Skolkovo hub in the future, Vekselberg said.
Seen as a key part of President Dmitry Medvedev’s drive to modernize Russia’s commodity-dependent economy, Skolkovo is intended to be an ultra-modern science community for the development and commercialization of new technologies.

The hub, being set up just miles outside of Moscow, will focus on research in five priority spheres: energy, information technology, communications, bio-medical research and nuclear technology.

The IBM R&D Centre in Skolkovo will also develop a system of intellectual property management, said Igor Korniliev, IBM Russia and the CIS General Director.

The first agreement detalises basic principles of the memorandum on mutual understanding, signed last June. It identifies major directions of research and the periods of working them out IBM R&D centre will be engaged in.

A key research area will be what is known as the intellectual development of oil fields, creation of Russian near-field-centre technologies and solutions for increasing safety of automobile traffic. The three chief research areas include working out of a virtual model of gas and oil fields where extraction is hard, aiming at increasing efficiency of the upstream processes. Other projects include creation of safe and customized mobile transactions in the industries like communications, retail trade and the banking sphere.

In the framework of the second agreement, IBM is to share its expertise and provide licensing for the know-how of building an intellectual property management system that will include methods of identification and appraisal of technologies that can prove perspective from the viewpoint of their commercialization.

Skolkovo expects to obtain IBM analytical tools and the methodology of the search for partners in research and commercialization, which is something unique given the actual absence of this knowledge in Russia.

As Viktor Vekselberg put it: “The road map of our cooperation makes plans for it clearer, identifying major directions of this work to help us stimulate the development of the innovation ecosystem. IBM’s global expertise is a strong potential for cooperation with Russia,” he added.

To quote IBM Central and Eastern Europe director David Stocks, his company is pleased to go into cooperation with Russia aiming at developing innovations and entrepreneurial culture.

Analysts assess the signing of the 2 new agreements between the U.S. and Russian research centres as another big step forward towards developing scientific and cultural relations between the two countries. The more examples of this we will have, the better for the both sides, they agree.

Eugene Nikitenko