Rostelecom will buy software of Microsoft for 1.8 billion rubles

In October, 2013 Rostelecom announced the most large-scale tender in the history for purchase of licenses from Microsoft. The operator is ready to spend 1.8 billion rubles for prolongation of a subscription.

Conditions of the tender for purchase of office programs of Microsoft announced by Rostelecom are published on the website of state procurements. Initial contract amount is 1.8 billion rubles, it is expected three years, the operator is going to purchase licenses more than on 90,000 computers. In total in Rostelecom about 160,000 people work, the representative says it.

The former agreement of Rostelecom on use of office software from Microsoft, including the Windows operating system, the Microsoft Office software package and the Microsoft Exchange e-mail client, expires in the nearest future. And directly Microsoft does not sell the products to the Russian companies, it is done only by her partner distributors. Therefore to prolong agreement term for use of software, Rostelecom had to announce competition.

However in such scale Rostelecom buys licenses of Microsoft for the first time. The operator signed the previous agreement with Sitronics (former "subsidiary", and nowadays "granddaughter" of AFK "Sistema"), it was still before Rostelecom attached interregional companies (MRK) of Svyazinvest, and the agreement was expected 64,000 licenses, the representative of Rostelecom Andrey Polyakov says. Now, when Rostelecom attached not only MRK (it happened in April, 2011), but also Svyazinvest (since October 1, 2013), the computer park extended and licenses it was required more, he adds.

In the conditions of tender it is said that the supplier should have the special status — Large Account Reseller (LAR, the large partner authorized by Microsoft and authorized to sell its products to corporate customers). Such status for October, 2013 eight companies have:

• I-Teco,
• Lanit,
• NVision Group,
• Softline,
• Compulink,
• Croc,
• Insight and
• Comparex.

NVision Group considers the possibility of participation in the tender and considers its conditions interesting, the representative of this company Valeria Voskresenskaya says. Lanit does not participate in tender, the employee told it. It was not succeeded to receive comments at representatives of other LAR-Microsoft partners. The representative of Microsoft refused comments.

On average licenses of Microsoft such cost corporate customers $250-300 for one computer a year, the shareholder and the board member Pingwin Software (the Russian producer of the free software) Dmitry Komissarov says. Rostelecom is ready to spend about $700 for the computer in three years — the price of the contract in itself quite market, Komissarov notes. Another thing is that the three years' payment already exceeds the average market value of the computer, besides, there is a trend of annual value increase of software of Microsoft (for example, in 2013 licenses for all programs, except the preset versions of Windows, rose in price for corporate clients for 5-9%). Therefore the large companies study a possibility of use of an alternative of Windows — the free Linux operating system that gives 2-3-fold economy, and also helps to receive discounts at Microsoft, Komissarov says. According to its data, Rostelecom has such plans and.

Use of the free software by state structures was supported by the former Minister of Communications Igor Shchegolev, the same idea was advanced by his predecessor Leonid Reiman. The current minister Nikolai Nikiforov publicly did not speak on this subject. Polyakov claims that the free software the company on the computers does not use^[1] yet^[1].

Notes