19/12/2005   New Commercial Director in PeterStar

Peter Akulshin is appointed PeterStar Commercial Director. For a long period this post was held by Steven Gardner who decided this August to leave the company and telecommunications business and go in for other activities.
Mr. Akulshin has been working for PeterStar since 1997 and to present day held the post of Director on Telematics Services of the Company, being completely responsible for launching and developing Internet and data services and their commercial results. In 2004 he was also responsible for integrating ComSet business in the PeterStar structure.

“Peter Akulshin is a highly professional and promising manager. He demonstrated perfect results in the course of running Internet divisions of our company. At present we possess strong positions on the consumer market of Internet services and are leading in terms of the number of corporate customers, - comments the General Director of PeterStar Victor Koresh, - I believe that his energy, professional qualities and ambitions will contribute to efficient increase of the company’s business”.
In his new position Peter Akulshin will be responsible for sales, maintenance and marketing of PeterStar services in Saint Petersburg and the company’s affiliates in the Northwest Region, including telephony, data, Internet services and equipment.
According to Peter Akulshin “the new appointment provides for prospects of professional development and a possibility to settle problems of increased scale and complexity”. Mr. Akulshin sees his top-priority tasks in maintaining the company’s leading positions on the corporate customer market in Saint Petersburg, mainly at the expense of improving the quality of service and expanding the range of new up-to-date services.

Biography:
Born on May 13, 1967 in Leningrad.
In 1992 graduated from the SPb State Technical University, the physico-mechanical faculty, with a master diploma in the specialty “Mechanics and Control Processes”.
From 1992 to 1997 worked as a senior research officer for the State Science and Research Enterprise “Sevmorgeo”, engaging in the development of high-precision aerial navigation systems.
In February 1997 came to ZAO PeterStar to hold the position of data service engineer. In 2001 was transferred from the position of leading engineer of the operations department to the position of project manager on data network development (the development department of ZAO PeterStar). In summer 2002 was appointed Director of Telematics Service Department of ZAO PeterStar. From March 2004 was simultaneously appointed Deputy General Director, and from August to December 2004 - General Director of ZAO Comset.
At present studies in the St. Petersburg International Institute of Management under the MBA program.
Married, has a daughter.
Hobbies – mountain skis, drawing.

19/12/2005   PeterStar Optimized IT Infrastructure and Improved Efficiency Due to IBM Technology

19 December 2005, Saint Petersburg, Moscow – Today the PeterStar Company, one of the largest communication carriers in Saint Petersburg and the Northwest Region of Russia, and the IBM Corporation have announced the completion of a project on optimizing and consolidating the PeterStar IT infrastructure, as well as ensuring its high reliability and availability.
Efficiency of PeterStar’s activity is directly connected with optimally using advanced information technology. After all, to date the Company serves about 100 thousand telephone lines and occupies among alternative operators approx. 60% of the market of telecommunication services rendered to corporate customers. The PeterStar fiber network makes over 3000km, being the longest in Saint Petersburg.
Within the scope of the project on estimating the efficiency of IT resources of the PeterStar Company it became necessary to analyze the available park of various primary- and proxy-level servers, data storage systems, as well as evaluating the capabilities of their balanced use within the developing IT infrastructure of the Company. Further IT resource optimizing and consolidating and constructing a data storage system based on SAN technology must provide effective development of PeterStar services, customer base increase, and improvement of the Company’s competitiveness.
To achieve the tasks set a decision was made on constructing a powerful DataCenter on the basis of IBM eServer pSeries 570 servers, IBM TotalStorage DS8100 disk systems, IBM TotalStorage Tape Drive 3582 tape libraries, SAN switches, IBM Tivoli family software to manage the IT infrastructure.
“The telecommunication market sets exacting requirements pertaining to the reliability and accessibility of IT infrastructure, as well as the cost to manage and maintain it. Having carefully analyzed solutions on choosing a supplier, PeterStar decided in favor of the IBM proposal excelled in its thought-out approach and corresponding with our requirements to the maximum. We were also permitted to preliminarily test the complex; the results convinced us of the appropriateness of our decision. At present our new IT infrastructure has undergone tests and put into commercial operation. The impressive capacity of the new DataCenter’s computing resources and the capability of flexibly reallocate them among IT applications results for the Company’s business in the following: - the range of services furnished has been expanded and the required level of service provided” – mentioned the IT Director of PeterStar Alexander Fedotov.
In order to settle the task of improving the application execution efficiency the disk space of the IBM eServer pSeries 570 server is spit into dynamic logical partitions (LPAR) with a capability to dynamically reallocate resources of the server depending on its load. The partitions are controlled by ÎÑ Linux and IBM AIX. The data storage system that is based on SAN technology consists of the IBM TotalStorage DS8100 disk system and the IBM TotalStorage Tape Drive 3582 tape library and provides the operation of applications, corporate data archiving and backing with no extra load on the network. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager is used as software to arrange a hierarchical archive.
“IBM servers based on 64-bit POWER5 processors are popular among customers in absolutely different fields: - from companies with geographically distributed branches to small-sized organizations. The combination of the POWER5 platform advantages and the capabilities of the developed UNIX architecture along with IBM innovation data storage systems make it possible to meet to a great extent the challenge of telecommunications companies, in particular to systemize a complex IT infrastructure, cut operating costs and an aggregate cost of possession, as well as contributing to the development of service-oriented approach, expansion of business efforts and performance” – said Sergei Bugrin, Director on Hardware Sales, IBM EE/A.

About PeterStar
PeterStar is one of the telecommunications market leaders of the Northwest Region, specializing in the provision of telephony, data and Internet services. The Company serves over 100 thousand telephone lines and occupies a considerable share of the business telephony market among alternative communication carriers – about 60%.
The Company has affiliates in Moscow, Murmansk, V. Novgorod, Pskov, Kaliningrad, Petrozavodsk and Vyborg, in which it renders communication services based on up-to-date digital technology. Respected organizations such as RF Sberbank, Vneshtorgbank, Grand Hotel Europe, Radisson SAS Hotel are among its customers.

About IBM
The IBM Corporation is the world largest company in the field of information technology, which over 90 years has been occupying leading positions in terms of innovative business reformation. Relying on its own resources, as well as on the resources of its key business partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that allow its customers to apply the advantages of the new On Demand business era. Detailed information on IBM’s strategy in the field of business is available at the address: www.ibm.com/ondemand or www.ibm.com/ru