may.nnov.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod Center for Computer Technologies "MAY" (TsKT "MAY"), a company that worked in cabling systems, computer equipment supply, and system integration. In 2007 the header of the home page carried the firm's address and phone numbers: "Russia, 603024, Nizhny Novgorod, Poltavskaya St., 22, tel (8312) 11-24-78, fax (8312) 78-76-06"[1]. As the home page of later versions of the site reported, the center "began operating on May 25, 1996" and was "one of the companies that stood at the origins of the IT market of the Volga region"[2]. Web-archive snapshots of the address span the period from November 1999 to August 2020[6].

The mid-2000s site: cable, fiber optics, and service

The 2007 version was arranged as a small corporate catalog of services. The top menu consisted of five sections — "Company," "Products," "Solutions," "Service," "News" — under which subitems unfolded: "About the company," "Projects," "Contacts," "How to find us"[1].

The products section listed computer equipment, SCS (structured cabling systems) components, structured cabling systems themselves, fiber-optic communication lines, computer networks, and power supply systems; the RIT Technologies and AMP Netconnect brands were listed as separate menu items. The service block included the pages "About the service center," "HP Service Center," "iRU Service Center," "Contract maintenance," "Outsourcing," and "Technical support"[1]. Even earlier, in a snapshot of the nn.ru catalog directory dated June 20, 2002, through which the site entered our sample (see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating), the listing described "MAY" as an authorized installer of the Smart Cabling System (RIT Technologies), a system partner, and an authorized COMPAQ service provider[7].

System integrator: the 2010s site

By the mid-2010s the site had been rebuilt: above the menu ran the line "MAY system integration © 2010," and the menu itself had changed to "About the company," "Statuses," "Clients," "Projects," "Recommendations," "Vacancies," "Contacts." A separate line listed the areas of work: building IT infrastructure, engineering systems, telecommunications systems, information technologies, automation systems, business systems, service center[2][3]. In the "About the company" text itself the same areas were repeated as a list, and in the 2016 version the item "Power supply systems" was added, which had not been in the 2014 list[2][3].

The home page doubled as the "About the company" page. As it reported, the center employed "more than 100 people," its work covered "the entire Volga Federal District," and the company described itself as having "traveled the road of development from a small company to the region's largest system integrator." Among its listed clients were the Gorky Automobile Plant, "Gazprom transgaz Nizhny Novgorod," Mobile TeleSystems, MegaFon, the Volgo-Vyatsky Bank of Sberbank of Russia, "Verkhnevolzhskiye magistralnyye nefteprovody" (Upper Volga Trunk Oil Pipelines), the "Nizhegorodskoye kaznacheystvo" (Nizhny Novgorod Treasury), Volkswagen, and Knauf; among its vendors were Microsoft, Oracle, HP, Avaya, Cisco, EMC, Dell, MOXA, AMP, and Systemax[2].

Besides the text about the company, the home page carried a news block, a newsletter subscription form, and an events calendar. The news shows what the company was busy with: on April 30, 2014, it received a perpetual FSB license for the distribution and maintenance of encryption tools; on September 15, 2014, letters of gratitude from the Nizhny Novgorod Region government to the company and its employees; on December 22, 2014, the status of authorized SYSTIMAX Solutions SCS installer[2]. In 2015 the site reported on the deployment of a video surveillance system at the "SIBUR-Kstovo" plant (December 15), on the DEPO Computers authorized service center based at TsKT "MAY" (November 12), and on the confirmation of Cisco Premier Certified Partner status (September 9)[3]. A separate recurring story is the preference (card game) tournament "poPULYarnye tekhnologii" ("Popular technologies," a pun on "PULYa," the Russian name for the preference variant): in the 2014 calendar it was set for March 15[2]; in the January 2016 snapshot the 12th tournament was listed for February 20[3]; and in the March snapshot it had moved to March 5. On February 26 the site wrote that "IT people" of Nizhny Novgorod would compete at preference, and on March 10, 2016 it reported that the 12th preference tournament had taken place in Nizhny Novgorod[4]. At the bottom of the page stood the developer's credit — "Site created by IP3"[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

Within the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, may.nnov.ru was a corporate website: a catalog of services, statuses, clients, and company news. It entered our sample from the nn.ru catalog directory rather than from surviving snapshots of the Counter.nn.ru rating: in the category "Network installation and system integration," the "MAY" listing's rating field read "Rating: none," whereas neighboring computer firms had numbers entered there[7]. In the final voting table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004, the address may.nnov.ru does not appear, although the same table lists dozens of sites in Nizhny Novgorod domain zones[5].

The last snapshots and the fate of the address

The latest home-page snapshot in our collection is dated March 17, 2016; its content is nearly identical to the January snapshot of the same year, and the most recent news item on it is from March 10, 2016[4]. The last record of the address in the web-archive index dates to August 17, 2020, with 80 records for the address in the index altogether[6]. By the time of our check, may.nnov.ru no longer loaded; our data contain no reports of the site moving to another domain. When exactly the site stopped being updated and what became of the "MAY" center itself, the materials available to us do not say.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2014 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2016 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2016 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Web-archive snapshot index of may.nnov.ru, 1999-2020 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — nn.ru catalog, category «Network installation and system integration», June 20, 2002 (archive)