On August 7, 2013, in Obninsk, the Russian Technology Transfer Network (RTTN) held a training seminar on the operation of the new IT platform of the Enterprise Europe Network - MERLIN. The seminar was attended by the representatives of the Russian Union of Innovation Technology Centres, RTTN and the Russian Agency for Small and Medium Business Support (RAPMSB) – the three members of the Gate2RuBIN Consortium.

The Enterprise Europe Network implements an integrated approach to providing services to SMEs. The new IT platform is designed to support and develop the capacity of the Network Partners to offer their clients a full range of services supporting their commercial, technological and research cooperation. MERLIN platform combines the functionalities of the previously used separate IT systems and includes also a number of new functional services. MERLIN also includes the tools for communication between the Network Partners - Forums and messaging.

In the beginning of 2012, a gradual transition to the MERLIN platform has been started. Most services are already running. The full-scale system is expected to be in place to the end of 2013. In 2011, a special group of Merlin Champions was formed that testes the new tools and provided support for the transition to MERLIN. From the Gate2RuBIN consortium, the Merlin Champion was Yuri Alferov (RTTN).

The seminar was focused on the issues related to the changes in the interaction between the Gate2RuBIN Project Coordination Team and regional centers resulting from the transition to MERLIN. It is expected that, according to the new profile validation process, the quality requirements will be enhanced, especially towards the business cooperation profiles. The regional centres will receive more opportunities in the direct access to the databases of EEN profiles and events; the procedure of subscription for automatic mailings will be also individualised.

The new IT platform of RTTN, expected to the end 2013, will be fully compatible with MERLIN by functional services and data formats, while the automated business process of RTTN is fully corresponding the relevant business process of EEN.