GMCS at the St. Petersburg Digital Hub 2026

On September 3, a GMCS delegation took part in the St. Petersburg Digital Hub, held at the Expoforum Convention and Exhibition Centre. The event brought together representatives of business, industry, the financial sector, telecommunications, government agencies, as well as software vendors, equipment suppliers, and experts in information security, automation, and AI.

The key highlights of the business program included a roundtable organized by the CIO Club, as well as sessions on digital transformation, cybersecurity, digital medicine, the use of AI in 1С, and corporate infrastructure development.

The main focus of the discussions was the current state of the Russian IT market. Speakers identified several systemic challenges:

• risks of foreign service disruptions;
• talent shortages;
• a lack of high-quality data for training models.

These factors are pushing companies toward accelerated import substitution, but at the same time impose a strict requirement — the need for a fundamental restructuring of business processes. According to analyst forecasts, addressing these issues will lay the groundwork for market recovery, which is expected in 2027.

"Interest in big data and analytics is naturally growing: they enable cost optimization, improve process efficiency, and help identify new growth points. As for artificial intelligence, its widespread adoption in business processes, as noted by event experts, is still constrained by insufficient automation and data quality. As a result, the focus is shifting to targeted AI use cases as decision-support tools. GMCS emphasizes precisely such applied solutions — we help businesses build them, relying on real data and deep industry expertise," commented Nikolay Kozlov, Acting Head of the GMCS St. Petersburg Branch.