Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan yesterday met with Professor of Hamburg University Jorg Rosbach and Professor of Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technologies Leonid Riwkin. The two experts are in Armenia to attend a Yerevan State University Physics Department-hosted symposium due to be held this June 30 under the Candle synchrotron light source project.

Speaking about the Candle synchrotron light source project, Tigran Sargsyan stressed that it will help advance fundamental and applied research in Armenia to promote international cooperation in the given field. The involvement of international experts was highly appreciated in this context.

Grigor Barseghyan, who heads Microsoft-Armenia, said today that the company’s new innovations center would hopefully open by the fall of this year. Mr. Barseghyan made the prediction at an event entitled “Innovation Day 2010″.

The company has entered into an agreement with Ministry of the Economy and the Yerevan State Technological Institute. The new center will be housed on one entire floor in the Institute. Mr. Barseghyan said the work of the center is already underway at the “Enterprise Incubator Foundation” facilities.

“Dialogue between Business and Technologies” , a forum designed to spur the development of the IT sector in Armenia, kicked off in Yerevan today. RoA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan has taken a personal interest in these efforts and has lent his support.

Greeting the participants PM Tigran Sargsyan emphasized the importance of the business forum. “The field of Information Technologies is a dynamically developing sphere, and year by year our people feel the improvement of the quality of services and their increased accessibility. This is what the measures taken by the Government should be targeted at,” he stated. »»»»»

At 5 pm on 28 May, the final round of the “Mine-Detecting Robot” Competition of the Armenian Open Championship of Robots is scheduled to take place at Lover’s Park.  Participants in this competition of a military nature have been tasked with creating robots that can detect mines under grass cover and relay a map of their locations to a server.  The mines being used have systems which produce sound to suggest that the robot has set them off and exploded.  The robots are required to conform to certain size and weight limitations (30 x 30 cm, 10 kilograms).  The team whose entry completes the task with least errors in the least amount of time will be declared winners. »»»»»

The Third Annual DigiTec Business Forum is set to take place on 9-10 June at the Armenia Marriott Hotel.  The theme for this year’s event is “Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Routine Business.”  The main objective of the forum is to support the introduction of ICT in to other sectors of the economy and to be an umbrella under which all the ICT products and services aimed at modernizing the economy can be presented. »»»»»

An article in today’s “Bloomberg Business Week” dealing with computer software piracy and Microsoft’s attempts to clamp down on such global fraud, mentions Armenia as a prime offender. The world’s largest software producer’s anti-piracy efforts are hampered by programs that are difficult to distinguish from genuine products said David Finn, associate general counsel for Microsoft anti-piracy.

The monetary value of unlicensed software worldwide grew by 5 percent to $50.2 billion in 2008, with the most widespread piracy in countries including Armenia, Bangladesh, and Georgia, according to data from Interactive Data Corp. and the Business Software Alliance. Increases in theft are being driven by faster growth of software in high-piracy emerging markets, they said.

The yearly reports of the Global Economic Forum, that refer to the network readiness of nations or, which is the same, the level of distribution and utilization of IT (Information Technologies), show that Armenia has experienced a drastic and steady downturn in its position.

In the Global Economic Forum’s 2008-2009 IT ratings, Armenia, coming in at the 114th spot, lags well behind all its neighbors. Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia came in at the 60th, 61st and 88th spots respectively. »»»»»

France Telecom (Orange) says it is on course to launch a mobile service in Armenia by the end of the year, says Bruno Duthoit, the CEO of the newly registered Orange (Armenia) operation and that the company is unphased at the prospect of entering a market that is approaching saturation levels.

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The NKR National Statistics Agency reports that the number of internet users in the country has risen sharply over the past year. As of July 1, 2009, there are 4,674 internet users registered in Karabakh of which 4,053 are registered as apartment consumers. As of July 1, 2008, those with apartment internet service totaled 2,531. »»»»»

Ericsson is bringing high-quality, interactive TV to viewers in Armenia through a deal with operator Ucom. Ericsson will deliver its IPTV solution including GPON technology in the first contract of its kind according to finchannel.com. »»»»»

“Armenian PowerSpell 2009″ is an Armenian spell check program that its creator, Arman Boshyan, claims to be able to recognize 97% of the words currently in usage in Armenian.

It was displayed at today’s DigiTec Business 2009 exhibition. The program, distributed by the company “Partev-Papyan”, makes corrections according to grammatical, punctuation and rules of syntax. It also includes a dictionary of abbreviations and offers translations of non-Armenian words. »»»»»

RoA Prime Minister visited the “Digi Tec Business” exhibition that opened today in Yerevan and afterwards stated that the implementation advanced technologies is one of the most productive ways to increase productivity levels, something that Armenia must seriously pursue especially during the current economic crisis. »»»»»

Armenian incumbent fixed line operator ArmenTel (Beeline) aims to fully digitise its PSTN by 2010, according to Dmitri Pleskonos, the vice president of business development in CIS for Vimpelcom – the operator’s parent company. »»»»»

WorleyParsons Limited, one of the world’s largest consulting and engineering design firms providing services to the power, hydrocarbons, minerals and metals, and infrastructure and environment sectors, recently secured a contract from the Armenian government to build a new nuclear power plant in Metsamor, Armenia. This according to a Industrial Unfo Resources report. »»»»»

A two-day conference on “Promoting Regional Cooperation through Information Technologies” kicked off in Yerevan today. The forum has been organized within the framework of Armenia’s presidency of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization. Representatives in the information and telecommunications field from Armenia, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Turkey will participate in the forum.

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