November 26, 2007 IBS is carrying out a project to upgrade infrastructure of 15 Russian liberal arts higher education institutions and provide them with a shared unified catalog of textbooks, education materials and previously built e-learning resources.
The project has been ordered by the Federal Agency for Education under the federal targeted program for education development in the Russian Federation for 2006-2010 (in Russian). IBS was selected as the project contractor based on the results of an open tender (in Russian).
The unified catalog will enhance cooperation between Russian liberal arts universities and significantly facilitate interchange of education materials and e-learning resources. The infrastructure to be deployed can further be used to build a network community of liberal arts universities and develop information services.
The project consists of two phases. In the first phase, each of the higher education institutions will be provided with the required hardware and software infrastructure including computers, servers, storage systems, switching equipment and software. The project will involve concurrent supplies and installations of hardware at 15 universities geographically dispersed throughout the country.
In the second phase, the unified catalog of education materials will be built and the software and hardware supplied will be integrated with the Federal Information & Learning Resources Center (in Russian). In building the required infrastructure, the project relies upon IBM, Microsoft, Novell, VMware solutions and in-house developed solutions (IBS Catalog) to describe education materials according to international standards.
The catalog of education materials of liberal arts higher education institutions will be located on the web portal of the Federal Information & Learning Resources Center. As the result, faculty members and students from all over Russia will be able to use the web to access descriptions of programs and courses run at other universities.
The project has a budget of 144,965,000 rubles. The work will be completed before the end of 2007.
Additional information
The Federal Information & Learning Resources Center was created in 2006 to enhance availability of information and learning resources. The portal of the Federal Information & Learning Resources Center currently consolidates and enables on-line access to e-learning resources for university faculty members and students, schoolteachers and pupils. New services to be developed will significantly enhance the quality of information interchange between all involved in education.
About project participants:
Higher education institutions involved in the project: Barnaul State Pedagogical University, Irkutsk State University, Kabardino-Balkarian State University, Kazan State University, Kemerovo State University, Mordova State University, Moscow State Law Academy, Penza State University, Petrozavodsk State University, Pskov State Pedagogical University, Pyatigorsk State Linguistic University, the Russian State University for the Humanities, Stavropol State University, Tula State University, Udmurt State University.
Federal Agency for Education (under RF Ministry of Education and Science) organizes government education services provided by secondary, vocational and further education institutions, organizes further professional training and re-training of R&D and faculty staff of government higher vocational education institutions and government R&D institutions within the higher and post-graduate vocational education system.
IBS is Russia’s leading player in the IT and consulting market. It was formed through the merger of IBS and Borlas Consulting Group. It is part of IBS Group Holding Limited, along with Luxoft and Depo Computers. Its core lines of business are management consulting, business applications implementation, IT outsourcing and IT infrastructure. IBS headcount exceeds 3,400 employees including over 1,500 certified consultants. 84 of Russia’s top 100 companies are customers of IBS. For more information on IBS please visit www.ibs.ru.
For further information please contact Lada Scherbakova, PR Director at lada@ibs.ru, phone +7 (495) 967-80-80.
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