Microsoft has hired a leading veteran of Ukraine’s and Russia’s telecom industry to take over as general manager of its Kyiv office
Microsoft has hired a leading veteran of Ukraine’s and Russia’s telecommunications industry to take over as general manager at its Kyiv office.
Dutch-born Eric Franke, former general director of Ukraine’s UMC mobile operator (renamed under the Russian MTS brand earlier this year) and a well-known figure in Kyiv’s business community, officially starts his new role as Microsoft Ukraine’s general manager on Nov. 29, taking the place of predecessor Valery Lanovenko, who is taking over as head of competitor Apple Russia.
“The IT market alone in Ukraine is far from reaching its full potential, and I am thrilled by the opportunity to extend the partner and customer ecosystem that is developing here in Ukraine and to develop our people, who will help the market reach new heights,” Franke said.
Microsoft’s Ukraine operations are taking off like a “rocket ship,” he added.
The company’s in-country staff has mushroomed from six to 100 over the last four years, and experienced 40 percent growth in the 2007 financial year. It also saw the launch of Ukrainian versions of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office System software. Ukraine is one of Microsoft’s top 12 growth countries worldwide.
“In Ukraine, there is a treasury of very qualified, technical people [for] software development [and] consultancy.”
Telecom and IT are “converging” industries facing many of the same issues and becoming more intertwined, Franke said. He added that piracy poses a serious “security issue” for telecoms as well.
A veteran of the mobile communications business with over 25 years’ experience, Franke began working in Russia in 1994 to start up country operations for Eriksson mobile, and was later tapped to head all mobile activities of Golden Telecom several years later.
In 2001, Franke left Moscow for Kyiv, and spent the subsequent years working for Ukraine’s then mobile communications leader UMC .
In 2005, Franke returned to Moscow as first vice president of MTS. Most recently, Franke headed Russia’s telecom Comstar-UTS, the fixed-line telecom arm of MTS’s parent group, Sistema.
