Rustam Minnikhanov: “Tatarstan and CISCO should pass on to new level of relations”

On November 20, at his meeting with CISCO delegation led by company’s Vice-president Wim Elfrink, Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov said that Tatarstan and CISCO have wide experience of cooperation in different spheres and new areas of cooperation should be found.

Tatarstan Vice-premier – Minister of Information and Communications Roman Shaikhutdinov, Mayor of Kazan Ilsur Metshin, Minister of Internal Affairs Artem Khokhorin, Minister of Construction, Architecture, Housing and Utilities Irek Faizullin took part in the meeting.

Opening the meeting, Rustam Minnikhanov said that CISCO is a world’s leader in the sphere of network technologies, and Tatarstan is actively cooperating with the company. The agreement on cooperation was signed in 2012, joint projects were discussed at forums in St. Petersburg and Davos. In February Tatarstan delegation visited Barcelona to get familiar with CISCO “smart city” solutions. In October Tatarstan and CISCO signed a road map of cooperation for the next two years, and CISCO laboratory opened at Kazan Federal University.

“CISCO is our partner and we do not see further development without this company. Today any industry requires IT solutions,” Rustam Minnikhanov said.
Wim Elfrink told about his lecture at Kazan Federal University and company’s intentions to employ talented Tatarstan students. “We suppose that Tatarstan students can start working at CISCO in Kazan,” he said.

Participants of the meeting made suggestions concerning prospects of cooperation with CISCO.

Roman Shaikhutdinov spoke about prospects of IT solutions in increasing energy and resource efficiency in city economy. Irek Faizullin, in his turn, said that these issues would be discussed at a meeting with CISCO delegation at Tatarstan Ministry of Construction.

Artem Khokhorin told about plans on developing video surveillance system.