What foreign IT solutions it is simpler to substitute and what it is more difficult than Opinion

TAdviser learned what foreign IT solutions it is simpler to substitute and what it is more difficult

What IT solutions it is simpler to substitute

Before answering a question what foreign solutions it is the simplest to substitute, according to experts, it is necessary to consider two factors. First, complexity of reproduction of import-substituting technology, and secondly - the scale of replacement of the solution.

For example, domestic office applications in the market are had, available also the Russian operating systems of jobs. However, considering that the number of users of these systems in the large company can be calculated by tens and hundreds of thousands, process of full translation with import on domestic becomes very difficult. It is necessary to carry out integration of software of jobs with other systems, to provide continued support, to train users, - Dmitry Vedev, the marketing director of group of companies Aplana explains.

For this reason, in his opinion, become "pioneers" of import substitution managerial applications for automation of the supporting processes. The number of their users is not so great, as at office systems. At the same time the supporting systems are not so critical as key business solutions.

Evgeny Sudarkin, the CEO of Prof-IT Group, also considers that it is the simplest to replace solutions on automation of core business processes:

It is easy to replicate and scale these solutions, there are a saved-up examination and a large number of already implemented projects. It is simpler to replace such products for the reasons of high prevalence in the market, broad development of branch networks of vendors and availability of the specialists who are well knowing a product.

Sergey Razumovsky, the chief executive of Raidix company, notes that all stack of IT technologies it is possible to present pyramids where at the bottom level elements of IT infrastructure and basic IT services lie in the form, and on upper there are user applications.

All high layers of a pyramid in the work rely on lower and depend on them. Therefore objectively, proceeding from purely technology reasons it is simpler and easier to change separate applications, than basic infrastructure services, - he explains.

Dmitry Grebenshchikov, the director of technologies of import substitution of Diasoft, adds that it is the simplest to substitute with domestic software the small systems.

Dmitry Mazein, the CEO of Advanta group, carries business applications which have the analogs which are successfully working at the Russian market to easily replaced solutions.

For example, in the market of project management systems the worthy competition to solutions on the basis of MS Project Server is made by the Advanta system which we develop already 14 years. It occurs because local developers are closer to the Russian user, know features of business processes, a management maturity at the Russian enterprises and propose solutions which really work, - he says.

Roman Romanov, the deputy CEO for development of Satel, considers that to find a worthy alternative the easiest to software products in which development the Russian Federation always took the leading positions in the world.

Here it is possible to carry safely completely the RTU domestic VoIP-platform — the Russian telephone exchange or a professional monitoring system of infrastructure of SOVA. Solutions based on RTU can replace many solutions of global manufacturers: Avaya, Cisco, Unify. And monitoring based on SOVA can replace many products from a line of IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView and EMC, - he notes.

Dmitry Kurtov, the director of programs of Department of technologies of work with data of Rostelecom company, considers that it is the simplest to execute replacement in the softwares that directions / classes where mature open source solutions are more presented. In confirmation to it many domestic software developments are based on open source solutions, the expert adds.

Specific classes of systems which, according to domestic experts, the easiest to substitute with the Russian analogs and also explanations why these solutions are called are given below.

Security aids

Security aids – the direction which thanks to regulatory requirements in Russia always developed in the, special way. At the same time, there is no means of antivirus protection, according to Mikhail Savelyev, the director of business development of Informzashita company, need specially at all to importozameshchat: one of world leaders – the domestic company.

Dmitry Sorokin, the head of department of infrastructure solutions of Softline group, adds that the Russian decision makers in the field of cyber security work decades at the world market in the highly competitive environment. They create software products which operate with a standard set of protocols and are easily integrated with the IT infrastructure existing in the company.

According to Ivan Taranenko, the head of department of complete solutions of Gendalf company, antiviruses of domestic developers concede nothing foreign and in many respects are even ahead of them therefore process of substitution goes easily.

Electronic Document Management System (EDMS)

Strangely enough, replacement of EDMS by importozameshchenny is not so terrible as it seems at first sight. Of course, before IT specialists and methodologists there is a set of questions: migration of historical data, training of administrators and users, application of regulations on a new system, and for end users changes the interface of the working tool.

However these projects are technically more variable as concerning historical data – it is not obligatory to transfer everything, and concerning processes – transition can be step-by-step that allows to find the most convenient option for the customer, - Konstantin Lyanguzov, the head of department of implementation of Directum in public authorities comments.

Besides, in the field of EDMS the set of competitive Russian analogs is presented at the market.

Users hard perceive any changes, but existing domestic EDMS quite correspond to requirements and when all needs of the user find the solution, quickly get used to the new tool.

According to Timur Akhmerov, the CEO of BARS GROUP, for workflow systems in Russia there is a unique, absent in the West business process: organizational and administrative document flow.

It always not really well supported the western systems of such class therefore there are many solutions domestic. The idea of failure from the western ICs for benefit of Russian looks more than appropriate, - he considers.

Business intelligence (BI)

Simplicity of import substitution is obvious to the systems of the class BI which allow to analyze the different information arising during primary activity: if processes of activity are already automated, a BI system solves not such difficult and specific tasks. And the circle of these tasks is defined in the market long ago.

BARS GROUP as the system developer of such class, can tell with confidence – a problem only in whether the Russian software is ready to support work with the large volume of data. But this issue is resolved by testing and increase in equipment capacity, - Timur Akhmerov comments.

Yulia Kudryavtseva, the director of strategic development of Foresight company, adds that her company offers the powerful, high-performance systems which are easily integrated with existing solutions and with the Russian DBMS and OS. Therefore it is possible to speak about a possibility of easy replacement of the import BI systems by developments of Foresight company.

Systems of virtualization

Vladimir Rubanov, the managing director Rosplatforma, considers that it is the simplest to replace those solutions which have the minimum dependences on other solutions. In a server stack – it is the systems of virtualization which are able to be established directly on "iron" and are able to virtualize any operating systems – both Russian, and foreign.

It allows to carry out substitution pointwise, without need to replace the whole ecosystem of the interconnected software, - he notes.

Mobile solutions

A number of experts sees ample opportunities for replacement of the western mobile solutions on Russian.

So, Yulia Kudryavtseva, the director of strategic development of Foresight company, tells that together with the partner of Scientific Research Institute SOKB her company issued the joint solution – The Protected Mobility. This development includes the list of ready protected applications and allows to develop mobile applications for business of any complexity in the shortest possible time, at the same time ensuring global information security of all mobile ecosystem of the enterprise using the Russian software certified by FSTEC. "The protected mobility" consists of two Russian products — "Foresight. Mobile platform" and SafePhone platform (development of Scientific Research Institute SOKB).

What IT solutions it is more difficult to substitute

Office software

Serious difficulties arise at substitution of a mass packet of the office software. Works in this direction slip not the first year.

It is only possible to guess the reasons, but I do not exclude that the lack of long-term "road map" of development of a product and excessive flexibility of developers could play a role. Sometimes the harmonious product concept can be undermined by contradictory requirements of big customers, - Pavel Svarnik, the head of department of consulting of LANIT-Integration company considers.

Also Konstantin Lyanguzov from Directum holds the similar opinion. According to him, most heavier now there is substitution of office suites and editors. A basic reason – products from the register do not support fully formats of the applications editors which were earlier existing in departments. As a result, historical documents in new tools open changed – with distortions, sometimes with loss of images, barcodes and other elements of documents. The lack of converters of historical documents in the formats supported by domestic goods complicates a situation.

Perhaps, the situation will change in 2019 – with arrival to the register of new solutions, such as "P7 Office" which, maybe, will correspond to more real requirements, - the expert notes.

ERP and other large information systems

According to Roman Zhukov, the director of competence center Garda Techologies, not easy to substitute technically difficult solutions which development from scratch requires essential time and resource expenditure, specific competences, or lifecycle of which very big (10 and more years). According to him, it is possible to carry to a similar class ERP systems, development environments, an APCS.

Also Anton Chekhonin, the CEO of NORBIT company agrees with it. According to him, historically as ERP in most the large companies of an oil and gas sector, power industry, telecommunications, other production companies foreign solutions – first of all, were selected by SAP and Oracle. As a result, the companies spent years and millions of dollars for implementation, customization and development of ERP applications, on them key business processes in the companies are started. Transfer functionality of such systems, for example, on 1C (which now by the opportunities quite corresponds to the western solutions, and we see an explicit fashion on implementation of new projects on this development) – it means to pass exactly the same way which was earlier passed with SAP: spend millions more of dollars that in the functional plan to receive exactly what is and works already now. Besides, risk even of a short stop in work of ERP are multimillion losses for business. Therefore import substitution of ERP systems is a long, expensive and disease process which will be possible only with tough political will, Anton Chekhonin is sure.

Evgeny Shchepilov, the managing partner of Service business of AiTeco Group, adds that despite presence of strong players, competition level among domestic developers of such systems is insufficiently high. The possible reasons - in relative "youth" of the Russian segment of developers of fundamental IT solutions. The Russian developments time concede to foreign analogs in functionality or convenience. Also a certain inertness, habit force matters. However, according to him, emergence of 1C:ERP, for example, became an important signal that the potential of the Russian developments is very high, as well as demand for them.

Roman Perepelkin, the CEO BusinessInterSoft, considers that there is a huge problem of import substitution of solutions of Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, IBM and other software, t. to their largest customers VTB, Sberbank, Gazprom, Aeroflot, Rosneft and the other state corporations, whose working capacity are is the top priority for functioning of the state as such. Substitution of large information systems requires considerable investments, big staff of qualified specialists and can be integrated to high costs because of forced idle times.

If to distract from import substitution policy, it just doubling of expenses on the solution of the same question — at least, quite so the Accounts Chamber and other control bodies can regard a situation. The problem is complicated by the fact that in some cases replacement of basic software will result in need to process all FSIS. It will cause repeated testing, integration, personnel training, etc., - the expert notices.

Galina Mayorova, the head of Syntellect sales department, tells that her company replaces Documentum. At the same time, the problem consists that this product is used by the largest enterprises of the country, and lives make more than 5 years. So it is stable, debugged solutions which are difficult for replacing from the point of view of users as it is not logical replacement of badly working solution, and a compulsory measure.

Highly specialized solutions

Difficulties of substitution of specialized software are connected with the fact that its creation requires deep mathematical base and methodology. Besides, lag of the respective areas of the Russian science, and lack of the budgets required for similar developments affects.

It is obvious that selecting between long-term waiting of a new solution and implementation of the existing system right now which will allow to reduce costs for functional area necessary for you for a certain number of percent at once, business will make a choice for benefit of instant economic result, - Alexander Semyonov, the chairman of the board of directors of Corus Consulting Group notes.

According to Evgeny Sudarkin, business process automation, but also the engineering experience accumulated by years is the cornerstone of the CEO of Prof-IT Group, highly specialized solutions not just.

Find the Russian analog of full-function CAD, PDM or the platform for implementation of Internet of Things difficult. Yes, there are very fragmentary, highly specialized domestic solutions, but their functionality does not cover all tasks of users. With search of the Russian PLM solution it is even more difficult - it is not just change of a product with the same tools, it is change of methodology, often all logic of development of the digital double, - he notes.

Alexey Smirnov, the CEO of BaseALT company, adds that in import substitution program implementation big "headache" is caused by software written by request for specific tasks of the organizations or departments since nearly 100% of these programs are strictly focused on work in the environment of Windows demand obligatory existence of Internet Explorer, are not compatible to domestic operating systems and the application software.

Unfortunately, a row gosinformsisty with which users whose computers are equipped with OS based on Linux cannot work also belongs to such solutions, - he explains.

Engineering software

One more "problem" class of systems – engineering software (a CAD, the settlement systems).

As Alexey Smirnov notes, the CEO of BaseALT company, in Russia is created consortium of developers of the engineering software Development — independent consolidation of the Russian developers of engineering software. But transfer of engineering developments from one CAD in another is extremely difficult and expensive task.

At the same time the commercial director of Ascon Integration Alexander Petrov notices that converters which allow to inherit without serious consequences information (DWG, JT, STEP and "direct", proprietary formats of data) are already developed for converting of data from a CAD. Experience of integration into foreign solutions allows to provide inheritance of data and from PDM.

But at the same time, according to him, domestic developers need to finish solutions of a "heavy" class. For example, on surfaces of double curvature, tasks of management of technical requirements, configurations of separate products, etc.

According to Timur Akhmerov, the CEO "BARS GROUP", such classes of systems as PLM, a CAD SCADA MES, CAD CAE, CAM or are not covered by domestic developers, or do not cover all process for which are intended.

The described classes of systems are automation systems difficult, specific to the field of activity, processes which are not regulated at the level of the country in general. In the IT industry of such solution it is accepted to call "vertical products". So solutions which are necessary not in general to all clients, and clients of a certain vertical (for example, PLM of heavy mechanical engineering, PLM of shipbuilding, etc.).

In our opinion, development of such specific systems in Russia went insufficiently intensively since actually culture of production using information technologies is still not really developed in the Russian Federation. Therefore such products in fact did not appear. In this case import substitution – writing of a product of this class under the customer. It costly on time also requires the financial investments, - Akhmerov notes.

Systems of collecting, storage and data processing

From the technical point of view for substitution systems on collecting, storage and data processing are difficult.

According to Sergey Kuznetsov, the CEO of UniData company, in each organization there is the whole stack technology solutions of such largest producers as IBM, SAP, Oracle, SAS. Often these solutions are shared, in different divisions and departments can be separate departments which are engaged in administration and data management. "UniData" developed the effective implementation methodology to optimize these processes.

Hardware solutions

Problems of substitution can arise also concerning difficult hardware infrastructure solutions and hardware-software complexes.

According to Roman Volkov, the CEO of IVA Technologies, the existing Russian solutions in this part are rather young and not always have sufficient functionality for full integration into the existing IT landscape built on proprietary protocols of foreign producers.

He considers that creation of the Russian software product is simpler than the hardware that is caused by a number of factors: legislative – requirements to software products have much less, technology – not all necessary components are issued in the territory of the Russian Federation, economic – the volume of a series of the Russian vendor, a priori is less, than at the vendor delivering products to several countries that significantly affects their cost value.

Opinions were shared

Operating systems and DBMS

Concerning operating systems and database management systems opinions of domestic experts were shared.

So, according to Dmitry Grebenshchikov, directors of technologies of import substitution of Diasoft, appeared competences and special means on painless replacement of DBMS now that does this task simpler, than earlier.

I would tell that systems worth up to $300 thousand can quite be replaced for reasonable time and money, - he explains.

Alexander Azarochkin, the head of Competence center OTR, also ranks DBMS as IT solutions which can be substituted almost without serious consequences. At the same time, he specifies that the solution should not contain a lot of logic of data processing at the level of DBMS, and the main logic should be taken out on the level of application servers.

From users substitution of operating systems can be also carried out without serious consequences. As Konstantin Lyanguzov explains, the head of department of implementation of Directum in public authorities, on the one hand, the operating system influences all other installed components – they should be supported. On the other hand, change of OS to a lesser extent influences end users. Most of them use web clients for work with information systems now, and in this case interfeysno big changes do not happen.

But from technical aspect not everything is so simple. Operating systems and DBMS are difficult software packages with which under interaction many other widely used applications and information systems are developed.

For operating systems the separate difficult moment is an interaction with the equipment. The vast majority of drivers and the application software to the office equipment, computer peripherals, the specialized equipment can work only with foreign solutions of Microsoft and Apple. The question of compatibility with the Linux systems based on which almost all Russian OS are constructed cannot be solved without developers of the equipment. And developers have no interest to invest in adaptation of solutions for Linux owing to extremely small prevalence of these OS in the world market. So far we see the only real way to fix this problem: based on one hardware system unit to use as the existing OS from Microsoft, and the Russian OS as the second system. Such hybrid approach works and does not contradict the current instructions, - Ivan Taranenko, the head of department of complete solutions of Gendalf company notes.

Anton Chekhonin, the CEO of NORBIT company, believes that different assemblies of Linux and PostgreSQL DBMS can be considered the Russian solutions with very big stretch.

Nevertheless, even transition to software is open source integrated to a number of difficulties. Even the Russian producers first of all develop solutions for Windows and commercial DBMS, - he adds.

Dmitry Mazein, the CEO of Advanta group, also considers that difficulties with substitution of operating systems and database management systems are connected with lack of analogs with sufficient functionality for the corporate sector and such solutions specialists.

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