The Russian Geometric Kernel (RGK)
   RGK, Russian Geometric Kernel, is being developed as part of a project fully financed by the Russian Government. Why? What progress has been made? What purpose does it serve? What should we be paying attention to? What key failures of other kernels is it addressing? What does it mean for the Russian CAD market? Several of the RGK team will join the discussion. For reference, look at the overview of RGK and David Levin’s excellent article

Where is Collaborative Engineering Headed and What Does it Mean for Russia?
   Engineering collaboration is becoming increasingly important. Complete engineering supply chains appear -- from product design over integration and factory design to distribution -- whilst ever more parties get involved in the engineering process, in the same organization or across companies. How can the resulting collaboration requirements be supported by IT? Is it just a question of “engineering in the cloud” or is more required? Where does Russia stand, and what does the evolution of these practices (globally) mean for Russia's future?

Jumping the Gap
    Leading firms in Russia are world-class in the way they implement and use technology. The challenge in building Russia into a stronger leader is the wide gap between those technology leaders and the rest of user community. A growing number of users are falling behind in technology implementation. How do followers jump the gap? What gets in the way? What can software vendors and their extended ecosystems do to bring a higher percentage of their customers closer to the front of the line?

Evolving Business and Delivery Models for Software (and Hardware)
    The Cloud has been a catalyst for a sea change in the business models for software firms. We’ve seen some of the options before: SaaS (software-as-a-service); perpetual-use licenses; rental; annual licenses; tokens; site licenses, license-per-CPU, per core, per person, per machine…, but it’s still not clear what it will look like in the context of engineering with the cloud. Factors such as where it’s hosted, shared servers, multi-tenant servers, or behind the firewall also come in to play.

We’re in the middle of this transition. Many have already moved their customers from perpetual licenses to annual maintenance licenses. Now more are moving to strict rentals, software-on-tap, suites (more for more), and mixing of software and hardware for power-on-demand. On the customer side, software has been moved from a capital expenditure to the expense column. In the past, it was a known cost. As we go forward, the customer may have control over the spend but will have to make daily decisions on how much of the “software-on-tap” they wish to use and when. There’s a great deal of uncertainty about this on all sides, but like it or not, the transition will happen. What’s a software firm to do to survive, thrive, or capitalize on the transition? What are the customer expectations that need to be managed? What business models (or mix of models) can work? Is it good or bad for customers? For vendors? What about the channel?