Promsvyazbank is switching to domestic software, but so far it is forced to purchase Oracle for 700 million rubles

On April 26, 2021, Promsvyazbank (PSB) announced a request for quotations in electronic form for the provision of licenses, technical support and access to updates to Oracle^[1] software^[2]. The maximum price that the bank is ready to pay for this is about $10.315 million. Payment must be made in rubles at the rate on the day of payment, specified in the notice for purchase. At the exchange rate as of April 30, the amount would be about 767.2 million rubles.

The bank expects to spend up to $3.125 million directly on licenses. Among the products that he plans to purchase are Oracle Database and related software, including clustering and accessibility solutions for Oracle Database, for automatic diagnostics and monitoring of the database, transferring resource-intensive data from the main database to backup, etc.

The list also includes Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-On Suite Plus, which can be used as a protection against unauthorized access to information, which implements the functions of identification and authentication, as well as security event logging. It also needs Oracle WebLogic Server, a platform for developing, deploying, and launching enterprise applications.

As for technical support services, PSB wants to receive it for two years, paying a maximum of $5.28 million for it, and about $1.9 million for access to software update services.

PSB has the status of a reference bank for the military-industrial complex "(photo - RIA Novosti/Vitaly Belousov)"

The PSB told TAdviser that at the moment their bank is focused on creating a new IT landscape, built on the basis of software from a single register of Russian programs. The main efforts are focused on the selection and implementation of business applications made or planned for inclusion in the register of domestic software. This is a multistage process that will take time.

Currently, there are not many alternatives to IT solutions built on freely distributed or fully Russian software on the market, while fully meeting the requirements of the bank. Most of the implemented business systems require significant improvement under the requirements of the bank. Therefore, while PSB uses current IT solutions and buys support for foreign DBMSs - until the implementation of similar systems built on an import-substituted or import-independent technological stack is completed, the bank notes.

For its own developments, as an alternative to foreign DBMS, the bank is already actively using the Postgres PRO DBMS, and also plans to use other independent DBMS, the PSB added.

At the end of 2020, in an interview with TAdviser, PSB IT Director Sergei Pegasov noted that in the field of DBMS there were solutions based on ACT, such as Postgres PRO, but this is not Russian development as such, and plus not all Russian systems work on such databases.

Also, there are not enough examples of the work of such DBMSs with highly loaded banking systems, for example, with ABS, when there is a large transactional load with peaks, Pegasov noted. The bank cannot use solutions that have not passed a high-load test, and it is not so easy to simulate such a load. And even if the vendor has a successful reference, the bank still needs to test everything itself, since each bank has a different IT infrastructure and load.

And in March 2021, Maria Shevchenko, chairman of the board of directors of Kiwi Bank and head of the working group on the transition of financial organizations to domestic software and equipment under the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, in an interview with TAdviser noted that in terms of import substitution so far the largest problem is precisely in the DBMS.

At the heart of even popular Russian ABS is a foreign DBMS. Many banks use Oracle - corporate DBMS No. 1 in the world. Are Russian DBMS of the same quality? No. Especially if the question concerns large banks with their transaction volumes and processing speed. We can also talk, for example, about virtualization and container systems, "said Shevchenko.

The risks of dependence on American software, including Oracle, against the background of geopolitical events of recent years have repeatedly been embodied in reality. For example, since 2017, Oracle has tightened working conditions with Russian banks and energy companies that are subject to US sanctions ^[3]of the last cases - the refusal to sell Microsoft software to Baumanka, which falls under US sanctions for training weapons specialists^[4]. PSB, which has the status of a reference bank for the military-industrial complex (MIC), from this point of view can be classified as a special risk group.

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