Stepan Tomlyanovich: We do not observe mass transition to the free software yet

TAdviser: What for the company became results of 2014? Whether expectations were met?

We are quite happy with results. The company showed growth (though small) that provided it rise on several positions in the ratings of the IT companies. For example, according to RAEX we entered in TOP-10 software developers and in TOP-5 distributors, having yielded only the first position.

Despite a difficult situation in economy, we managed not just to hold the market share, but also to develop. Not all companies can brag of it, the certificate to what the fact that many of them preferred not to disclose publicly results of the financial activities for last year and not to participate in ratings.

More than 50% of our revenue are the share of services - we were and we remain, first of all, service company which sees the task in helping the client to take a maximum of advantages from IT – not very well, we delivered a system or not.

Still essential share of revenue (over 20%) at us is provided by development of information systems to order. It means that, whatever new finished software products appeared how business processes were unified, it will never not be possible to make them absolutely identical. And setup and modification of basic functionality often can be more expensive developments from scratch. Therefore we expect that demand for the custom systems will remain further, and not only in a public sector.

TAdviser: The greatest share of revenue in an industry section is the share at you of a public sector. What changed in work with state customers today – what became budgets, the purposes, tasks of projects? Give examples.

State structures really are our major customers. Due to the economic crisis, the total amount of orders, of course, was reduced. But everything is not so simple. Restriction of budgets in the presence of problems not of smaller complexity led to the fact that the state customers became more selective to approach the choice of the contractor, quality requirements of development raised. The number of large-scale, expensive projects was sharply reduced, but many customers did not refuse the solution of long-term tasks, and began to fragment them on short-term projects, with more accurately registered intermediate results.

It is quite natural that we observe increase in demand for the systems providing revenues of budgets, i.e. connected with taxation and other payments, the commissions for the services provided by state bodies.

New projects appears, of course, much less, but they are. For example, for the purpose of ensuring rational use of resources and information the system of technical accounting of objects of road and transport infrastructure of the city of Moscow is created.

In general, it would be desirable to note that we do a lot of things for the city. More than ten different information systems among which a management system of the joint dispatching service of the Moscow Department of Housing, Utilities and Amenities, a system of accounting of violations for maintenance of an order on streets and in the yards and many others are operated. It is important that all these systems are integrated among themselves and with other information systems of the capital and also federal resources.

It is possible to carry the analytical system in the compulsory health insurance Moscow fund unrolled on the basis of the latest high-performance hardware and software system Oracle Exalytics to number of new projects. During implementation over 100 analytical reports which form automatically now were configured.

TAdviser: In 2014 market realities cardinally changed. In what you see the most significant changes and how the company changes?

We, as well as everything, try to adhere to the crisis response strategy - more accurately to set tasks, to plan budgets, terms, to optimize expenses on long-term development, saving at the same time a command and competitiveness in the market. Much attention is paid to increase in efficiency of project planning, profitability growth.

We try to do everything that in our forces to reduce project cost for the customer therefore developed cloud versions of the ready-made solutions, having made them available practically to any company. For example, SmartSport Cloud – a system for management of activity of football club – will be "on a pocket" even the university national team, the payment will consist only of subscriber payments for operation of functionality necessary to them. How many use – so much and pay.

There were structural changes and in the company. A number of the most perspective directions requiring consolidation of resources and certain investments were selected in separate business. So as a part of FORS Group there was a new company – Ah-FORS which activity will be concentrated on development and promotion on the market of the innovative solutions, ready to implementation, on three strategic directions - informatizations of sport, medicine and technologies of Big Data.

TAdviser: What strategy of the company in terms of import substitution policy whether there is an intention to transfer the solutions to Open Source?

We, of course, first of all, experts in Oracle, but in a portfolio of already implemented projects are solutions and on Open Source though so far their share in turnover is small. There are highly qualified specialists and good practice. Another matter – a scope of such systems. There is a number of critical applications with high requirements for security, reliability, performance, scaling, level of technical support where use of such platform is irrational and it is even technically impossible. In each case we analyze a task and we tell the customer what options of the choice of the platform for creation of a system necessary to it exist. And if Open Source is applicable, then, of course, we use it in the project.

The same systems which were unrolled on the proprietary software on this platform continue to develop further. In general customers very carefully treat transition to the free software. We do not see mass transition from products of Oracle or other import basic software because it is integrated or to big costs, or to lack of an alternative. More than 20 years of cooperation with Oracle convinced us that a chance which tools of this producer give to developers are almost boundless. With its help we do "jewelry" work".

TAdviser: In what do you see "growth points" of the company?

Such "points of growth" a little. The V-first, the company should develop that examination in which it is traditionally strong - development, integration, portal, analytical solutions, expanded technical support. These are the basic directions of our business on which it was based from the very beginning.

Secondly, research works in the new perspective directions – technologies of Big Data, "advanced" analytics, telemedicine. Here it is very important to open such fields of applied application which will help to create new opportunities for business, or in a new way to solve former problems.

Thirdly, creation and promotion of new IT services. So, services in technology consulting, audit of information systems that is connected, first of all, with aspiration of the customer as much as possible to use possibilities of the existing IT infrastructure and to increase performance of the computing powers without their considerable building are very demanded now.

Fourthly, the potential of promotion of constantly updated line of the high-performance hardware and software systems Oracle Engineered Systems is very high. This equipment is provided in the engineering center of the infrastructure solutions FORS Solution Center of FORS Distribution company (enters into FORS Group). Here customers and partners can test the software products and also get professional advice on configuring and optimization of the systems on this equipment.

We also speed up work in regions and in the markets of the CIS countries - Armenia, Belarus, Azerbaijan. In a number of projects there the FORS acts as the system integrator – the supplier of all equipment, software and means of communication.

TAdviser: What new products appeared at the company recently?

We some of the first in the market offered a product for data analysis from social networks - FORSMedia which is developed on the basis of technologies of Big Data. It is a software platform for conducting target marketing which allows to take and analyze the necessary data, obtaining various information on the existing and potential clients. Important feature of the solution is the automated mass enrichment of data on the clients who are users of social networks. The platform can be used as program ̆ a product, cloud ̆ service or single service. It is pleasant to us to tell that recently ForSMedia received the statuses Oracle Ready and Oracle Optimized that means a guarantee of the highest performance and reliability at operation of this system on the equipment Oracle Exa-.

Our solution for automation of the sports organizations SmartSport, though is not innovation, nevertheless remains the "hot" offer as analogs it from other producers did not appear. We believe that the market for it exists not only in Russia. By the way, we cooperate in this direction with football club "Spartak" for a long time.

TAdviser: In the conditions of crisis customers aim to reduce the costs as much as possible. May you share the trade secrets of decrease in project expenses? And as far as it works well?

We prove every day the capability to solve even the most non-standard problems in the conditions of the limited budget. We find methods of more rational use of the available resources – as the, and the customer. Widely we use the acquired templates of processes, algorithms, own author's methodology of maintaining projects. We try to build the most productive dialog with the customer from the very beginning that as it is possible to define more accurately tasks and means of their solution. It is simpler to us to make it as trusted relationships with many of them are built already up during long-term cooperation.

TAdviser: What tasks do you set for yourself for 2015?

Now it is important to create the strong base for further growth. We plan entry into the markets of the CIS, Western Europe and Latin America, new to ourselves. We hope that we will still grow together with the market and if not to run then to go ahead on one step. The steady position and stable development – are like that our priorities.