Good Memories

When I visited Moscow for the first time in 1991 together with Jaap Sombroek and Henk Bos (and a volleyball team from Goirle) I did not know what to expect. I had read a lot about the Glasnost and Perestroika changing everything in the USSR, but TV only showed empty shops and long queues of people trying to buy the last peace of meat in the shop. So I was a little worried about the food we could expect. We travelled from Brussels with a large Aeroflot Tupulev together with a lot of Russians carrying a lot of luggage in the cabin. When the plane hit the Russian floor at Sheremetivo a part of the ceiling came down, so my expectations even decreased before entering Moscow. But it was a very pleasant stay exceeding all my expectations. Nice people, nice restaurants, nice food, wonderful museums, a fantastic show by the state circus and so on. Hospitality was super.

Besides all these nice things regarding the quality of our visit, the business part also was very interesting. We met the IT staff of RIEMIE covering Sergey Smaguine, Andre Sykoulev and Vladimir Sentchilo (Volodja ) and they were our hosts during this stay. We also met the other employees and were astonished when we discovered that this small group of people did all the IT work for the 50 golden circle cities around Moscow.

Moscow had it's own IT department with a large mainframe what we also visited. They even had a full colour brochure and the manager was driving a car with a very large mobile phone installation. Compared to that the RIEMIE IT department was very poor with only some PC's and old telephones. But they were better motivated and very well skilled.

The general manager of RIEMIE (Algirdas Manushis) wanted to start up some cooperation and almost forced us to sign a document of understanding without any real serious content. Because it was no danger we signed, but Sergey Smaguine made clear that we should not invest much time on that cooperation because he had a better idea. His idea was to start up a joint venture covering most of his employees at RIEMIE developing software for the Netherlands. That idea could not be worked out at that time, but was very interesting to my opinion. This idea was the birth of Nicotech.

We (Sergey, Charles de Wuffel and I) worked out this idea in the next year and in 1992 the company really was founded. It was a very modern company because it's business was offshore development, it was a joint venture, employees were also shareholders and it's financial reporting was according to the European standards. It was really difficult to make the company also fitting to Russian legislation because this legislation changed almost every month. L+T paid it's share in the company by selling a IBM AS/400 via IBM Vienna and Finland. This machine was the first AS/400 in the USSR I think and it was used very good by the Nicotech people who became real specialists in OS/400 and Cobol.

In 1992 and 1993 I have spend a lot of time on the cooperation with Nicotech with a lot of visits to and from Moscow. It was a very nice period because of close contacts with the Nicotech people in Moscow as well as the Netherlands. Being a former board member I remember the annual board meetings showing fast improving figures and discussions on how the profit should be distributed. Afterwards we always had a party with the employees.

In 1994 I was asked to become managing director at Consist (another Dutch IT company), so I left L+T and resigned as a board member of Nicotech. (Consist is now part of the Swedish IBS group and is called IBS Nederland.) For that reason contacts with Nicotech decreased very quick, but always remained on a low level. Mainly with Andre Sykoulev and Robbert Mammaev because they started their own company Cinimex in close cooperation with the Dutch company Chronotech (owned and managed by former IBS managers).

It is a pity that Nicotech stopped its activities in 2003. But I expect that all people involved in the Nicotech history gained a lot of advantage in their career after Nicotech, because their experience contains a lot of value for their new employers. They really were pioneers who managed a lot of problems in Moscow as well as the Netherlands. They invested a lot of their time in this company and many of them had to leave their family and friends for months. I really admired their energy, ambitious and courage. They really understood that you can't milk a cow with your hands in your pants.

I remember a lot of nice and funny things. So many that it is impossible to write them down here. For instance the RIEMIE van we used for transportations. The Russia hotel with more hookers than bread at breakfast. The first dollar restaurant with a BMW picking up the customers. The giant queue at the first Mac Donalds. The hotel manager who kept my passport and required a double payment. Maybe I will write about these memories some other time on this website I will visit very often.

Looking back on 10 years Nicotech really gives me good feelings. I still am proud to be one of the founders of this company that gave me some kind of family feelings and I wish all my Nicotech friends good luck and prosperity in their lives and careers. Hope to see you again!

Harrie Gooskens October 2003