On March 25, ISDEF’s first one-day spring conference (ISDEF SPRING 2005) took place at the Orlyonok Hotel in Moscow.

ISDEF’s first spring conference, ISDEF Spring 2005, was held at the Orlyonok Hotel on Friday, March 25; its main topic was "Organizing trade channels among software companies”.

The conference opened with a welcome address by the Assistant Minister of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation, D.A. Milovantsyev, who expressed the intention of the Ministry to do its utmost to ensure that favourable conditions be created for the growth of the software industry in Russia. He voiced his hope for constructive cooperatioon with ISDEF in this regard.

Starting in 2002, ISDEF has been holding an annual fall conference. However, this year it became obvious that the topics had become so numerous and wide-ranging that an additional event was required, at which ISDEF members and others active in the software market would be able to assemble and discuss topical issues.

Two years ago the range of issues concerning conference participants was primarily connected to software development. Today ISDEF is exploring issues such as the organizing of marketing channels, promotion and methods of advancing software, and copyright protection. The most active and informative part of the ISDEF Spring 2005 Conference was the round-table, which focused on issues related to the formation of vendor-distributor relationships and copyright protection.

ISDEF Spring 2005 attracted 173 participants. It may be stated without exaggeration that, on March 25 at the Orlyonok Hotel, representatives from all sectors of the software market were gathered together – from small software development firms to well-known software producers (Kaspersky Labs, ABBYY Software House, Microsoft, PROMT, etc), and from major Russian and Western distributors (1С, SoftKey, МediaHouse, Digital River) to financial and legal organizations.