Ivan Laskin: "We created the THESIS system on those principles which become demanded today"

Ivan Laskin: You are absolutely right, the CUBA platform is a basis as for all products of our company, and some other, for example, It should be noted the project of Altarix "Mobile Reception of the Government of Moscow" company – service for processing of electronic citizens' appeals, and "The electronic register of oncological patients of the Republic of Kazakhstan" – the uniform base containing information on all oncological patients of the country.

Besides, in October of last year CUBA was officially presented at the Russian market as an independent product, and now we see interest in it from the large companies, integrators and developers of own software. Now at full speed preparation for release of the CUBA platform goes to foreign market – adaptation of the platform, the translation of documentation, etc.

For the last year the product for complex automation of taxi services of Sherlock rather actively developed – among customers there was a large Russian customer with the park over 300 machines, implementations abroad and work on the existing projects continued.

As for the THESIS system, it underwent strong changes too. We had already two new versions – 3.6 and 4.0. In particular, in version 3.6. there was a possibility of stream scanning and recognition of documents for acceleration of process of their processing and registration, the new cross-platform version of the THESIS program was released: Notifications 2.0 which we rewrote on usual to us Java technologies stack. Now all of us more often see how the state and business companies pass to Russian software and freely distributed solutions, and we work 4 years within this trend.

Version 4.0 new products more basic – transition to the new version of the CUBA platform took place and CUBA Studio support – the additional tool allowing to create cards and reference books in the visual mode is implemented. It allows to enter simple changes into the system without application of programming aids. Now the employee of qualification of the administrator, but not the developer can make it.

This approach – flexibility in modification of a system is put also at the level of the platform. We have a technology of projects of expansion allowing even at considerable customization of a product under the Customer then without problems to transfer it to the new version. We have clients who after considerable modification of a system for which tens of cheloveko-years were spent upgraded to the new version in 3 weeks of testing without any losses.

TAdviser: Now such intense geopolitical situation that inevitably mentions economy and the sphere of cooperation between the countries. Do you do business also in Europe and the USA - felt it on yourself?

Ivan Laskin: No, fortunately, did not feel. We are the Russian company with the strong foreign partner who helps us to promote products on the markets of the USA and Europe. As we are out of policy, we are not engaged in it, the geopolitical situation did not affect our activity in any way and we hope that will not be reflected. I do not know whether this situation will change, but we positively look forward. Our business is rather diversified – we have clients and in Russia, both in the West, and if something happens we will be able just to reorient capacities on the Russian market.

TAdviser: How do you consider whether in case of a full course the western systems will be able domestic to replace EDMS with import substitution in IT completely? If the country would decide to refuse the proprietary software with the source code written out of Russia what steps Haulmont would begin to take for promotion of the products here? By the way, where there is your development center?

Ivan Laskin: Haulmont is the Russian company with development center in Samara. Our primary clients also are in Russia. We initially went the way developments of the proprietary software open source. All code is written in the territory of the Russian Federation and belongs to the Russian companies, testing and technical support is performed too here.

Activity of the company and product development initially were based on the principles of the open code and cross-platform therefore we can work both with proprietary DBMS, and with freely extended, for example PostgreSQL.

Concerning import substitution and a total ban on foreign software, we hope that it will not occur as then the domestic IT industry will develop much more slowly, at competition restriction the market always suffers. But if it happens, at us is, than to answer.

TAdviser: TEZIS is implemented in the Russian market 4 years. There was some certain circle of customers, for example, on types of business or the industries, or a system is absolutely universal?

Ivan Laskin: Yes, it is unconditional, the THESIS system is universal and occupied the niche in the market due to technology advantages. We have examples of implementations practically from all industries of business – the industry, mineral extraction, trade, transport, communication, finance, insurance, public sector, etc.

But so it developed that the main and largest projects at us develop in the oil and gas and extracting industry, the banking sector and the sphere of insurance. For example, projects for FIA-Bank, Almazergienbank, Russkaya Platina Group, Alyans Oil Company, the Pomoshch insurance company, ALROSA insurance company and others. It is connected with simplicity of scaling of a system, support of holding structure, experience of implementations in the geographically distributed companies.

TAdviser: Could you cite as an example some non-standard, difficult projects in the technical plan for TEZIS?

Ivan Laskin: The main difficulties of projects in the field of EDMS according to us are connected either with replication, or with data migration when it is required to automate non-standard processes. Therefore it would be desirable to give an implementation project in Russkaya platina Group as an example - the large geographically distributed company on extraction of platinum group metals. It is worth referring a difference in time zones between divisions to features of the project (7 hours between Khabarovsk and Moscow), implementation deadlines, need of integration with the accounting system (1C: Manufacturing Enterprise Management). As a result of implementation of ESM THESIS in Russkaya platina Group all divisions were integrated into unified information environment, the transparency increased, and the instrument of control of the course of approval appeared. Thus, the problem of a big geographically-distributed structure of divisions of group of companies and an essential difference in working time was solved.

Divisions, remote from the center, had an opportunity of start of end-to-end processes – when the document card during approval can change many times an addition, being both in the Moscow system, and in Khabarovsk. It allows to continue work in divisions even in case of failures in the main office. The THESIS system was rather easily built in already created IT landscape of the enterprise, thanks to the cross-platform and flexibility, and was integrated with the accounting system.

TAdviser: What functionality is most demanded at your clients? How actively they demand mobile work with EDMS? What do you think of cloud EDMS whether they are necessary to the Russian users, whether this segment will develop at us?

Ivan Laskin: The classical functionality of the workflow system is most demanded - it is work with organizational and administrative documentation, approval of agreements. Also the popularity of tender modules, automation of logistics and other elements grows.

The mobile client is popular more and more, it is a trend and even a market demand. Our mobile version cross-platform, allows to work not only at one of OS as native applications. It can work without adaptation at any popular OS, whether it be iOS, Android, Windows. All the matter is that at product development we initially were based on those principles (the open code, cross-platform, web access) which became demanded in the market now, in the light of import substitution. And advantage is that we do not need reorientation in work and approach to technologies.

As for cloud EDMS, the position on this question did not change. Our system constructed on the full-fledged web client as any another is suitable for work in clouds at the corresponding setup. If we want to pass to the SaaS model, we will not need to rewrite a product, only to buy the necessary equipment and to recustomize a system.

Within five years of communication with different Customers, we noticed that the SaaS model and cloud storages of data are not really popular with large and medium-sized companies, at most, what they can go to is the organization of private clouds. Public clouds are demanded only at small business.

The latest events show that in the market of B2C even more often there are date leaks even from protected resources, such as Apple iCloud and Dropbox the Cloud service of file sharing. These incidents do not increase trust to clouds.

Besides, the market of cloud computing develops in Russia more slowly, than in the world in general, and in the conditions of import substitution and possible restrictions of work of the Internet it will occur even more slowly and to meet a bigger scepticism.

TAdviser: How will TEZIS develop the direction of electronic document management?

Ivan Laskin: At the moment the THESIS system was created as a mature product, we are not going to make revolutionary changes to it. There was the main functionality which saturated a product, we have plans for development, but we will not open them yet. It is going to release new versions, add-on modules, to develop a partner network and own sales. Now the THESIS system is demanded at large and average holdings, the geographically distributed companies. We will also develop these directions.