OREANDA-NEWS. Ukrtelecom, as a partner of the BEST CIO-2014 contest, together with the judges, determined the most professional CIO in the Ukrainian market in the Overcoming Obstacles category. The award ceremony took place on January 22, 2015.

Ukrtelecom became a partner of the BEST CIO project, initiating the Overcoming Obstacles category. The Operator initially planned to determine the best CIO in The Prospect of the IT Industry category. The winner in this category should have been someone who is constantly evolving and is a driver of changes in their environment. However, the national business faced new challenges last year which were related to the situation in the east of Ukraine. Ukrtelecom and the organizer of the contest, Kompyuternoe Obozrenie (Computer Review) portal, decided to change the category and select the most successful CIO during the period of major changes in the structure of companies and geography of business.

Ukrtelecom ranked Dmytro Okhota, Head of IT at FUIB (First Ukrainian International Bank), as the winner in the Overcoming Obstacles category. During the deterioration of the situation in the Donbas, Dmytro and his team did large-scale work to transport the data processing center equipment from Donetsk to launch it in a safe place. For the major bank, data processing is crucial to maintain smooth functioning and customer service. During the transfer of data center the services of the bank were unavailable to customers at night for 45 minutes, which almost did not affect the service. In just a few days, a new data center had been created from scratch at a new site with minimum interruption of banking services, which provided a stable customer service throughout Ukraine.

"Ukrtelecom, like other companies nationwide, felt the impact of the uncertainties in the Donbas. But despite this, we continue to implement system changes in our company and celebrate the success of other businesses. FUIB and its IT staff made a tremendous job of moving, installing and launching the data center in a short period of time. This case of the data center restart is certainly an outstanding example of a hi-tech operation. Overcoming the obstacles, FUIB once again proved that Ukrainian business is able to grow even in the most difficult conditions under the guidance of true professionals,"- said Mykola Davydenko, Head of B2B at Ukrtelecom JSC, one of the judges of the BEST CIO-2014.

"Under the current FUIB's continuous operation system, we made the transfer of the data center from Donetsk to Kyiv. We were facing a very important task consisting in restarting the data center in the new environment in a few days. Our IT Department has fulfilled it. In the near future, the bank plans to create another data center. This means that our customers will consistently receive high quality service regardless of the circumstances", - said Dmytro Okhota, Head of IT at FUIB, winner in the Overcoming Obstacles category in the BEST CIO -2014 contest.

Results of the BEST CIO contest were announced on January 22, 2015. After careful selection and analysis of the participants' questionnaires, judges selected the winners in 10 categories, who achieved the greatest success in their areas last year.