DISKOBOLOS 2010

Diskobolos 2010 Marked by DIGITAL EUROPE
Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-government, Ministry of Justice, The Institute Mihajlo Pupin, Saga, EuroSky and Business School Minutin Milankovic from Belgrade, as well as Musala Soft from Sofia, Lanaco from Banja Luka, Telfor, Radio Beograd, Mikroknjiga, and IBM are the winners of this year’s Diskobolos. But, e-Skills Week, held in March this year, at the initiative of the European Commission, and in the organisation of DIGITAL EUROPE and EUN Schoolnet from Brussels, touching 65 million people with IT training, excelled more than others, achieving a convincing victory in the education category.  

At the closing ceremony at the Continental Hotel Beograd on December 21st, 2010, at the international Diskobolos recognitions awarding, the awards for this year’s highest quality solutions in the application of information and communication technologies in almost all sectors of economy and non-economy were announced. We also had a chance to see a presentation of a large number of achievements from the USA, India, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, and also from former Yugoslav countries.

Gartner

Look at The Incredible Thing

Cannes, the Mediterranean city located in the middle of the Côte d'Azur, widely known for its beauty, is the capital of the festivals, congresses and fairs that are happening throughout the year. Thanks to the film festival and many film stars who visit it, the first association of city of Cannes suggests that it is the seat of glamour, elegance and show business. Cannes is well known for its long sandy beach and La Croisette, one of the world's most beautiful promenade which is surrounded by luxury hotels, galleries and restaurants. It was first discovered as a tourist destination by the British in the 19th century. Over time they built the city with magnificent villas and at the beginning of 20th century luxury hotels Carlton, Miramar and Martinez have been built. Thanks to the film festival Cannes, in mid-May, becomes a central gathering place for the artistic elite, and thanks to Gartner, in mid-November, becomes the center for gathering of the leading figures in IT business. Gartner, the worldwide leader in IT research and advisory services, every year organizes a gathering in Cannes under the name Symposium / ITxpo

SBS

Successful Centralisation in Two Steps

The National Employment Service (NES) and SBS have cooperated for years, and through their most recent project, they managed to centralise its IT environment. The idea was considered before as well, but the prices and acquiring of communication lines made the concept hard to realise. However, during 2009, it was concluded that the conditions were created, and that the realisation of the project can begin. Predrag Stojanovic, Sales Director at SBS, said that SBS cooperated with the NES on a part of that information system, while the project of realisation was realised within tender where the solution of this company was chosen as the best. “We are pleased to say that we realised the project in the first half of December.”
Sasa Dulic, the Head of the IT department in NES, explained that the project that has just been finished is considered to be the top of the overall development of information system, which has lasted for more than a decade.

MDS

Cisco Thanked MDS!

At the opening of this year’s 10th anniversary manifestation Cisco Expo, Goran Obradovic, General Manager of Cisco Systems, after his introductory speech made an unexpected and nice gesture – he handed out the certificates of appreciation to the individuals and companies for their long-tern cooperation and loyalty they showed to the company that he manages. The certificates were handed out by Valentina Milenkovic, who in May 2010 was one of the first employees in this company, which at the time had only 3 members.
After reminding the auditorium that many other numerous business partners, distributers and clients have been with them all of these years, she first called out “the partner which has been here with us from the very start, or to be more precise, they were here before us.” That partner is MDS Information Engineering from Belgrade, “with which we successfully cooperated all these years, and managed to find common language regardless of all downs and ups, and we are thankful that because of them, Cisco is here recognised as a brand which means quality.”

Portal of the courts of Serbia

Launch of the Court Portal and “Case Flow”

Public access to the information on courts in the Republic of Serbia and information on cases (“Case Flow”) is possible via the portal of courts in Serbia: www.portal.sud.rs
The launch of this portal was made possible after the successful implementation of the Automated Case Management System (CMS) software, which the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Serbia, in coordination with the World Bank, implemented in 34 district and 26 high courts. The partners of the Ministry in this project are companies Orion Telekom, Logo, Mega Computer Engineering, Institute Mihajlo Pupin, Saga, and Informatika.
In 2008, the CMS business application was implemented in all commercial courts, as well as in the Supreme Commercial Court, in coordination of the ministry and USAID.
From any part of the world, any party or any interested citizen can make an insight into the content of the Portal of the courts of Serbia.

SIEMENS

Siemens IT Solutions and Services

The company Siemens IT Solutions and Services this year as well presented itself at two most significant IT events in Serbia – Sinergija and Cisco Expo. One interesting fact is that this year, Sinergija and Cisco Expo were held for the 10th, anniversary time, so the organisers gave their best to justify the reputation of these two events. Sinergija was held from 15 – 19 November 2010 in Sava Centre, where Siemens IT Solutions and Services presented itself at the FSI Summit, within the business part of the conference with the presentation Siemens – Insurance.net, A Look Into the Future, held by Radoje Dimitrijevic and Jelena Kiso. Only a few weeks later, on December 7 and 8, Cisco organised the 10th Expo event in the hotel Hyatt Regency, where Siemens ITSS was present as a partner, and Goran Raovic and Nenad Krzman held the presentation Outsourcing – Aim of Mean, where they described the elements of an outsourcing model from the aspect of commercial and financial, and technical and technological elements.

Tsomokos grupa

10th Economic Summit of the Republic of Serbia

At the beginning of November, Belgrade hosted the anniversary 10th Economic Summit of the Republic of Serbia, in the organization of TGI Tsomokos Group, and under the auspices of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce and Foreign Investors Council (FIC). The gathering was opened by Symeon Tsomokos, the President of Tsomokos Group. In the opinion of Symeon Tsomokos, Serbia has moved to a better business and politic ambience compared to the previous decade, and the recovery of Serbia economy can be expected in the current and the next year. What is also good for Serbia is that it has an open door that leads to the EU, which considers its candidacy.   In his address, the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs Ivica Dacic said that the Serbian Government is devoted to the further creation of favourable conditions for business and investments, and the creation of the rule of law.

CEPIS

CEPIS 2010

Every year, CEPIS - Council of European Professional Informatics Societies organises a final regular annual meeting in its headquarters in Brussels, where the results from the previous period are summarised, plans are analysed, and every second year, the part of the Board of Directors is renewed.
This year’s meeting touched on topics such as forming new work groups within CEPIS, Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP), action of European Commission for lowering the unemployment - New Skills for New Jobs, Cyber Europe 2010, CEDEFOP, Open Internet, Digital Competitiveness, and national reports of the Member States.  In the previous period, CEPIS established work groups Green ICT, Professionalism, and Women in ICT, so the members – national ICT associations, are invited to participate in forming new work groups in the next period, with the aim of raising the level of information society and digital literacy.

MICROSOFT

Sinergija 2010

Tenth anniversary Microsoft’s conference Sinergija was opened on 15 November at the Belgrade National Theater. The attendees were welcomed by Vladan Zivanovic, General Manager of Microsoft Serbia, Jasna Matic, Minister of Telecommunication and Information Society of the Republic of Serbia, Bozidar Djelic, Deputy Prime Minister, U.S. Ambassador in Serbia Marry Warlick, as well as representatives of Microsoft for Central and South East Europe, Pierpaolo Taliente and Michael Hartmann. 
On the next day, November 16, the technical part of the conference was opened in Sava Centre. In front of 1.500 participants, Borko Kovacevic, the Manager of Sinergija, welcomed the attendees and stressed: “Cloud computing completely changes the way in which we have observed information technologies. Microsoft has been developing cloud technologies for 15 years and all our services are being moved to the cloud. During Sinergija, you’ll hear many interesting lectures on this topic. And, don’t forget – We’re all in.”

SIEMENS

Synergy of Business and IT in Insurance

This year’s anniversary Sinergija, which Microsoft organised for the 10th time, was held in two tracks – the common one with technical lectures was organised in Sava Centre, and the more specialised one, which concentrated on topics such as integration of Serbia into global economic flows, copyrights and intellectual property in Serbia, e-Government and the reduction of costs in the public sector in Serbia, was held in the nearby hotel Hyatt. Three specialised conferences with cryptic names Summit 2010, Telco Summit 2010, and FSI Summit 2010, which tell they were dedicated to the business top, were also organised in the hotel. The company Siemens IT Solutions and Services participated at the third mentioned summit. Before we tell you what the representatives of the company talked about, we will decode the abbreviation FSI – it is the financial service industry.

IT STAR

E-business in the region

In the organisation of IT STAR association and Croatian Information Technology Society, on November 12, 2010, in hotel Panorama in Zagreb, an international conference was held, which gathered the representatives of Austria, Croatia, Italy, Ireland, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Serbia…The representatives of participating countries presented the achieved level and problems of the application of electronic business in their countries.  It is important to mention the presentations and achieved results of Slovenia and Croatia, and participation of the representatives of all carriers of implementation and application of e-business in Croatia, State Administration, economists, universities and IT sector.  The current situation of e-business in Serbia was presented by the Secretary of the Association for Information Technologies in Belgrade Chamber of Commerce, Mr Dusan Rakic.  On the sidelines of the conference, the meeting of the Croatian Commission for e-Account was held, where it was decided on the beginning of the application of e-Accounts, although the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Croatia still has not changed the Ordinance on VAT, which requires the issue of invoices in the standard form.

WINS-ICT

Investments in Research of Greatest Importance for the Future of the West Balkan Region

VLATACOM

Vlatacom Manages the Traffic in Luanda

In its offer, company Vlatacom, among other things, also has systems for traffic management and is actively developing its own hardware and software components, which with their top quality contribute not only to the functional enrichment of the system, but also simplify its implementation and maintenance. Until now, Vlatacom has usually covered the markets of the third world countries, and it has a very good reputation in Africa. One of its bigger projects was realised in the capital city of Angola, Luanda. 
The whole project was preceded by extensive operative study and the project of development of traffic management system, which defined the types of surveillance and management equipment, with detailed specifications, and all other necessary elements of the offer – Remote control system centre, video surveillance system, and communication network. The system covers central city area, works successfully and can be upgraded and extended.   The surveillance and traffic management communication network hubs in Luanda are split into several categories.

ECDL

4th Regional ECDL Forum Held in Sarajevo

The representatives of the informatics associations from the countries of the region: Austria, Croatia, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, exchanged their experiences, ideas and information on digital literacy on the 4th Regional ECDL Forum, held in Sarajevo on December 3, 2010. The conference was attended by high representatives of the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while the introductory speech was given by Meliha Alic, Federal Minister of Education and Science of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Miroslav Bobrek, Assistant Minister of Education and Culture of Republika Srpska. The attendees were also welcomed by the President of Council of European Professional Informatics Societies, Mr Vasile Baltac, who highlighted the benefits these gatherings bring to both general and regional promotion of application of computers and modern communication technologies in everyday life of citizens. The topic “ECDL in Function of Digital Literacy” proved to be very current, not just because of the low level of digital literacy in the countries of the region, but also because the European Union launched the Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE), as the framework for raising the digital competitiveness in the period from 2010 to 2020.

NPS

NPS –Synonym for Business Solutions

In the year that is just coming to an end, Serbia has, at least statistically, emerged from the crisis. How has the economic crisis affected the business operations of the NPS Group?  Were your business operations struck by the crisis or you managed to resist the general trends? Have you felt the improvement during 2010?
Please, include both Serbia and the region in which you do business in your answers. Statistics is an interesting and useful science, but sometimes, it provides unclear, blurry image, since you can either use or abuse the analyses, indicators and result presentations, depending on what you want to show. When we talk about Serbia and the state of the Serbia’s economy, statistically, we may have already come out of the crisis in 2010. Still, we know for sure, from the real, everyday life and business that the year of 2010 has been both harder and worse than 2009.

World Forum

Broadband World Forum 2010

Broadband World Forum 2010 is THE premier annual ICT industry event where 6000+ of the world’s technology decision makers come to do business. The world's largest broadband event featured keynote addresses from visionary industry leaders including 120 carrier speakers and panelists, interactive and dynamic panel sessions. The data traffic explosion, with its impact on wireline and wireless networks, and its associated challenges and opportunities, was in the mind of all attendees this year. They could also well experience some of our most advanced multimedia applications, demonstrating raising end-users behaviors that have a massive potential impact on the network. During the event the Broadband Forum was presented as industry consortium consisting of 200 members – service providers, vendors, consultants and lab test that architect a connected lifestyle defining best practices for global networks and enabling multi-service and content delivery.

TELEGROUP

Broadband Innovation of the Year
Interview with Emil Visloguzov, General Manager, Alcatel Lucent Serbia

Described as “The world’s largest Broadband event and the premier gathering of global decision makers in the Broadband industry”, this is an important event for the broadband industry for all players in the distribution, device and network markets. The data traffic explosion, with its impact on all networks and its associated challenges and opportunities, have no doubt been on all attendees’ minds at this year’s event. Alcatel-Lucent, as the leader in broadband networking, has introduced its vision - High Leverage Network™. It is our strategic approach for enabling Service Providers to evolve network and allows operators to transform the challenges of rich multimedia content and applications into opportunities.

Telecommunication forum

TELFOR 2010

Traditionally, the guests were welcomed by professor doctor Djordje Paunovic, followed by the dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade, professor doctor Miodrag Popovic. The Minister of Telecommunication and Information Society, Jasna Matic, pointed out in her speech that the EU considered the broadband Internet access to be an opportunity for exiting the crisis, as well as for promoting and sustaining its competitive position on the world market, and that it was the key issue for Serbia. According to the Minister, the implementation of broadband Internet access will promote the competitiveness of the country and raise the quality of the economy, in order to improve exports. That will also affect the promotion of the quality of life from the aspect of regional development, improvement of public administration, lowering the corruption and improvement of the education, health and judiciary services. The Minister highlighted that within the strategy 2020, the EU defined the areas that should have encouraged the construction of the broadband infrastructure, adding that this year, Serbia has received a grant of 20 million Euros from the EU within the IPA project for development of information society and digitisation of television. 

Pre-University Education

Securing Quality in Education

Career guidance

Skills for Employability

The British Council and the Ministry of Youth and Sports of the Republic of Serbia, in cooperation with the Ministry of Economy and Regional Development, National Employment Service, the Ministry of Education, and Belgrade Open School, at the start of December organised a two-day seminar devoted to career guidance.

JOB FAIR

Create Your Future

This year’s Job Fair for students and graduates from technical and technological faculties was traditionally organised  in the Technical Faculties building, on the 1st and 2nd November in Belgrade.  The goal of the manifestation was to help current and future young engineers from technical and technological faculties to get a desirable job or professional practice, and thus to apply gained knowledge in our country.
Jasna Janus and Stefan Karadzic, the main organisers of the event, welcomed the participants and attendees with the words: “Today, we left our laboratories and put on our suits and took our future into our hands, with the wish to create it. This youth showed that it has the strength and energy to realise the vision of the Fair with all its heart.” The honour of opening the Fair was traditionally given to the rector of the Belgrade University, professor doctor Branko Kovacevic, who said: “The society of Serbia is based on knowledge, and that knowledge requires investments. Both state and academic institutions and companies need to invest in knowledge.

Science Festival

Eye to Eye with Science

The 4th Science Festival is finished, and the number of over 19.000 of visitors in the premises of Student Cultural Centre, Gallery of the National Bank of Serbia, and especially the former department store Kluz, speaks in the favour of the claim that science becomes more and more popular topic in Serbia. Although there were more guests this year than earlier, the first impression the visitors gained were greater quality settings and bigger space. Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration and Minister for Science and Technological Development Bozidar Djelic officially opened the fourth Science Festival. The special guest of this year’s festival was the French Ambassador for Science, Technology and Innovation Catherine Brechignac, a physicist and former president of the National Centre for Scientific Research. Over 90 elementary and 38 secondary schools, or 6000 students, organised and visited the Science festival. Traditionally, the majority of visitors came from the capital city, but also from Smederevska Palanka, Novi Sad, Valjevo, Subotica, Kragujevac, Leskovac, and Skopje and Sarajevo. 

Mikro PC-World

IT Globus 2010

At the Belgrade City Hall, in the beginning of December, the ceremony of handing out IT Globus 2010 awards for important achievements in the IT, computer, and telecommunication fields was organized by the magazine Mikro PC-World. The awards were given in several categories, including the Best IT Journalist, the Greatest IT Contribution and Greatest IT Miss.  The recognition in the field of IT education for the second time went to JISA – Union of ICT Societies in Serbia, for its contribution to the IT education through ECDL program. Djordje Dukic, President of the Union, after receiving the recognition, said that in the previous period, significant results have been achieved on a local level, all private universities established ECDL training for their students, many ministries begun with the implementation of ECDL certification, the whole Government of Vojvodina and the biggest companies implemented ECDL training, but without massive action of the Ministry of Information Society and Ministry of Education.

Italy and the Restoration of the Magnificent Crater

Magnificent Crater

The President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano, and the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Serbia Nebojsa Bradic, opened the exhibition of the Belgrade National Museum in the presidential palace Quirinale in Rome on decebmer 10, 2010, under the name “Italy and the Restoration of the Magnificent Crater.” The Italian President highlighted that the exhibition proves the closeness of the Italian and Serbian people, as well as that we share common, Mediterranean space.  
The Minister Bradic said that the cultural cooperation of these two countries has a long and successful tradition, especially in protecting the monumental heritage.“The conservation and restoration of the crater from Trbeniste, which is a part of the collection of the National Museum from Belgrade, performed by Italian experts, are only the most recent of many examples of support and help. The outcome of this project, the exhibition organised in the Quirinale Palace, showcase the artistic heritage preserved in Serbia and Balkan to the Italian.