Interview with TAdviser: Sergey Matsotsky - about tectonic shifts in the IT market, divorce from IBS and new near-state status

Sergey Matsotsky: It seems to me that no one understands the figure - how much the market has grown or how much it has fallen. The pandemic has brought down this flat, whether upward or downward trend. The turbulence of 2020 mixed the maps to such an extent that at the qualitative level we can still discuss the dynamics, and at the quantitative level no one knows anything. But there are several factors that now, looking back, should say about 2020. The first is that, unlike Europe, Russian business in general and IT-Business in particular, did not measure. That is, it continued to function.

My close friend Alexei Popov now lives in Switzerland, and he has a company there that deals with voice technology. And he said in 2020: "Imagine voice technology against the backdrop of a pandemic is one of the most sought-after areas. But at the same time, no one talks to us at all. And not only with us, they don't talk to anyone at all. We have a lockdown. Switzerland is not working. " They do some minimum required volume of operations, but do not move forward at all.

It seems to me that in America it happened exactly the same way. In Russia, the business did not stop. Technological and meaningful development continues to take place. And this is a great achievement. Including, all the horror stories associated with small business also turned out to be not very wealthy and terrible. The vast majority somehow broke, survived.

The second factor is that the history of the remote, of course, greatly influenced demand. This is the growth of sales of laptops, and Wi-Fi, and the sustainability of telecom, and video conferencing. All kinds of technological innovations began to be introduced, management attention to IT increased, and respect increased.

I mean, right away, I don't really believe people are going back to the office. I think they will mostly return. Probably in a hybrid model, but will return. It seems to me that still a 100% remote model is ineffective. It leads to rotting.

Although it must be said that there has been another strong change, the effect of which we will spread for a long time. For employers, this is bad, for employees it is good. Thanks to the remote region pulled up to Moscow in salaries.

Sergey Matsotsky: I do not think that demand for something has fallen much. Overall IT growth has risen dramatically. Workstations, data centers, networks, all this has simply undergone increased use and the necessary modernization.

Sergey Matsotsky: Perhaps there was some kind of fading in the most backward stories, and that, I'm not sure. Front-end solutions are growing faster, but is it possible to say that companies have stopped implementing SAP? It seems to me that in general they continue to implement. At the first stage, long infrastructure plan projects were stopped. But today I look at the programs of the same large banks - Sberbank, VTB, Gazprombank - and I see that they are actively developing everything. I'm not talking about retail at all, they ran forward with double power. Everything related to logistics and delivery got a giant impulse. I would not exaggerate the value of COVID-19 as the main catalyst for change. But, of course, its influence is significant.

Sergey Matsotsky: I think talking about the growth of Sberbank's IT expenses by 4 times is not very correct. They, of course, grew, but, among other things, due to the fact that the bank bought a lot of assets, including them in the ecosystem. As of June 2021, Sber is much larger than the bank that was 10 years ago.

In general, I am afraid to predict further than 5 years, and in the next 5 years, I think there will be no slowdown, because digitalization in the broad sense of the word takes place before our eyes, this is visible.

Sergey Matsotsky: Everything related to software, including the custom development of large specialized systems, is growing and will grow further, because, it seems to me, the times of ready-made solutions are going away. In these systems, the transition to microservice architecture, to containers. This is a huge segment that is growing very quickly. There are not enough people under it, salaries are growing rapidly. This is probably the biggest topic.

I would not exaggerate history related to artificial intelligence. I generally do not understand what artificial intelligence is. I understand what neural networks are or some particular specific technologies. And artificial intelligence as a whole is not very clear to me. By this everyone means a little different. I don't think there's going to be a fantastic boom. Rather, it will be part of the same custom development.

Sergey Matsotsky: I think, yes. Relatively speaking, Microsoft's demand for licenses will fall, and revenue from Azure will grow. Oracle's sales of databases and derivative components will fall, and Oracle Cloud revenue will probably grow.

Sergey Matsotsky: Not only a model. It also makes sense, because these cloud services are rather designed for custom made solutions. So that something can be developed, generated, glued together on their basis.

Sergey Matsotsky: It seems to me that the open-source business has become quite large. Until recently, we all knew almost the only big company that blossomed on open software - this is Red Hat. Then there were many of them - Cloudera, Hortonworks, Elasticsearch, etc. Today, there are dozens of companies that do business on open source. Moreover, this is a different business model, more honest. I really like her. You open a large amount of code, but you earn, first of all, on support and improvements for enterprise-customers. I believe in this idea.

And, in fact, our company Arenata is one of the excellent examples of how to grow a fairly large business from open software, the demand for which is growing at least by tens of percent per year, if not at times.

Sergey Matsotsky: In many cases, "iron" is software-defined, i.e. it is already software. Although, of course, a program for the development of microelectronics and everything related to domestic processors has been launched. It is worthy of a separate big discussion, there are very controversial approaches. It is clear that there is a great concern of the state for its own security and reliability. But, on the other hand, there is a lot of speculation around this and attempts to rediscover America and invent a bicycle. A very difficult topic.

But "iron," of course, will not go anywhere. The shortage of silicon, which almost stopped deliveries from key contractors, indicates high demand.

Sergey Matsotsky: Probably, the enterprise-software market will not grow so quickly.

Sergey Matsotsky: Not only that. In the 2010s, an integrated all in one solution was considered a merit - let's take everything from SAP, CRM from SAP, MES from SAP, etc. Remember, 15 years ago, you could come to any bank and ask: what is your ABS? Today, this question will be surprising. What do you mean, what ABS? Accounting on one solution, risks on another, etc.

Sergey Matsotsky: Previously, there was a rather high cost of integration. And due to this, an integrated solution won. Now, firstly, the cost of integration has decreased significantly, and secondly, a microservice architecture has appeared, and everything is different there. Therefore, everyone had to resolve these issues again.

Sergey Matsotsky: The picture has become very diverse. And, I think, this was the main factor in my exit from IBS. After all, IBS was built as an ideal properly organized integrator, like Accenture or IBM, according to the classic model. And this is not even today's Accenture or IBM, but yesterday's. And it became quite obvious to me that this is beginning to greatly limit our capabilities. Let me give you an example. There is an HFlabs company. Who are they?

Sergey Matsotsky: Absolutely. Things got a lot more complicated. It is clear that there are classic developers. But there are also integrators who develop their own products. And there are those who are engaged in product development, but in many cases go into implementation, because they are well able to do this. In general, these names are rather stickers that are no longer wealthy.

And in general, the market has changed quite a lot. Tectonic shifts have occurred in recent years. Stable, probably, only the market of distributors.

Sergey Matsotsky: The ranks of integrators are very divided for various reasons. The ranks of vendors have also changed. Someone left the market, someone took off, some new companies appeared.

Sergey Matsotsky: Both people changed, and business models changed. The same insorsing insorsing discord. For example, today Sberbank claims to become a universal supplier of the Guest platform, believing that the platform it has made already has such a level of uniqueness and prospects that it allows the bank to become Amazon. I don't want to go into the details of whether he is or not, and how I feel about it, but he's clearly trying to do it.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes. Or, for example, the company oneFactor, which arose at Megafon, has become one of the leaders in the field of analytical big data for retail and marketing. In general, of course, the picture has become much more motley.

Sergey Matsotsky: I think I will not crush, because still in such large corporate structures the thought is very slow, no matter how German Oskarovich argues with this. Things are slower and more conservative there. A lot of money is, of course, good in terms of investment, but bad in terms of innovation. Therefore, I do not really believe that they will crush the market to such an extent that there will be nowhere to turn. It's just that there is no medium business in our country. We mostly have either a big business or a small one.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes, they are just medium. In this regard, of course, they always have a threat. Or maybe not a threat. For one of the managers, it will be a good scenario to sell the company to one of the big players, and then this will be an excellent completion of some cycle.

But, of course, companies such as Sberbank, Rostelecom",", MTS"" IKS Holding will play a large role. And they clearly seek consolidation, which turns them into big business. And we almost always have big business about-state. It becomes like cheboli, holdings the Korean financiallyindustrial. Of course, this is happening. But, on the other hand, something new is growing up.

Sergey Matsotsky: Were there good consolidations of IT companies?

Sergey Matsotsky: This is an unsuccessful, in general, story. It is clear that this was in the 2000s, when everything "boomed," when we were preparing for the IBS IPO in October 2008, which never happened. Neither our association, nor numerous others - Systematics, NCC, etc. - brought anything strategically much new. Now, on the contrary, it seems to me that separation and focusing are taking place. Everyone wants more freedom, faster decision-making.

Sergey Matsotsky: There are many interests in large structures, and decisions are always compromises. In the same IBS, for example, I could not make two competing divisions because it was wrong in terms of structure. And today in "GS-Investment" there are several companies that, generally speaking, compete with each other, while this does not bother me at all. I would even say the opposite. For example, IT-One, BFT and Supercode. Of course, there are nuances. Somewhere more engineering, and somewhere more applied. But these are very conditional questions.

Sergey Matsotsky: Absolutely. Probably, we will look so that they do not encounter each other completely forehead, but nevertheless this is a competitive story. At IBS, I could not imagine this. The very creation of a new division for some breakthrough should have been written into the general logic of the company.

Sergey Matsotsky: I think so. This is already happening, the market is transforming. IBS split up, some teams left Croke and Lanit. "Aplana" has been trying to survive for four years. Technoserv ceased to exist, at least in its former form. Today's T1 does not look like a Technoserv at all. Compulinka is no longer there. The war for Aquarius is going on and something should end.

Sergey Matsotsky: I don't know. To be honest, it's not interesting. I can't understand what the people are fighting for.

Sergey Matsotsky: In zero there was their heyday, in the tenths - sunset. And now, I don't think it's their time.

Sergey Matsotsky: It will, of course. At some point, 5-6 years ago, I was very afraid that Yandex would become our main competitor. The company is young, attractive, there are many assets. There was a fear that they would come to the B2B market and become an integrator. But no, they didn't, they can't.

Sergey Matsotsky: This is rather an exception that proves the rule.

Sergey Matsotsky: No, I do not believe. He doesn't really need it. He has where to develop in other directions. Probably, Yandex will become an active player in the cloud field. They clearly want this and believe that this can give them an impetus to international development. And that's really interesting.

Sergey Matsotsky: Including, of course. The Soviet technical intelligentsia, which I probably represent, is a thing of the past.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes, it seems to me, quite. Now the state is the source of the most interesting projects that are in Russia. Precisely because they have the opportunity to change the world.

Sergey Matsotsky: There is such a story, of course. Therefore, the state needs to work much more carefully. But you know, there's a positive. The state always pays in the event of a crisis. The treasury system, to which I had something to do, ensures that if you fulfill the contract, you will be paid. Unlike commercial companies that can pull and not pay.

But meaningfully today the agenda of the state is the most interesting. At least, if we talk about large-scale projects. Although, of course, a lot of interesting things happen in retail.

Sergey Matsotsky: She blurred a little. Firstly, because data arose and CDTOs appeared, the role of which so far can be interpreted in different ways. Although I must say that the 10-year big data cycle is now coming to the next round, and the data, of course, have become a very important asset in almost all large companies, their use begins to give high-quality breakthroughs.

In addition, in many companies, the first persons became sensitive on the topic of IT, especially in connection with the events of the last year.

Sergey Matsotsky: I would say that those who do not become will be slightly displaced. In the 2000s, everything was clear. There was a functional manager and was an IT director who translated from the business language to the language of technology and to the other side. And now, it seems to me, the vast majority of functional customers are ready to be both task makers and receivers themselves. Look at the same banks that go in this regard a little ahead. Managers of risks, retail, and other areas become customers. And they and IT directors are sometimes in a position of fierce confrontation. They often know how to do it. They want to choose themselves, make decisions.

Sergey Matsotsky: I think, yes. There are simply no other options. In this regard, the role of the CIO, of course, becomes more complex. Surviving is more difficult. Value is not so obvious. Previously, it was a story that only he knew the Aitish language, and therefore its uniqueness was understandable. And now it's gone.

Sergey Matsotsky: It seems to me that it is very uneven, as we usually have in such a large country. There are places that are clearly ahead of the whole world. The same tax service - I think that if it is not the most advanced in the world, it is definitely in the top five. The Russian financial system is exactly ahead of almost all of Europe and America. And probably, if to whom it is inferior, then to China. At least in the B2C part, China clearly has something to be proud of.

If we talk about public services, it seems to me that the idea of ​ ​ the MFC as a front office offline was very good. And the portal of public services as online support is also a rather cool thing today.

Then we begin to have problems related to two things. The first is backcophysical systems in a number of departments. In many cases, these systems are not just the previous generation, but the previous generation. The previous generation I consider classic client-server systems, but which are centralized and normalized. But the previous ones are those that are still decentralized. These are departments that have their own system in each region. And there are, unfortunately, many such departments. This all needs to be redone a lot.

The second problem that I think we have in the state is a data problem. We have a lot of dirty data. And this is a consequence of several things, including mentality. We are not very careful about business processes, about the rules.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes. We hope for the past. I used to be a programmer. As we believed: programming is important, but debugging or writing documentation is not a royal matter. Therefore, from the point of view of data, we have a lot of dirt. Therefore, it seems to me that one of the challenges today is to create a system that will self-clean the data. That is, data in the process of interaction in certain transactions will be self-cleaned. I see no other way to solve this problem.

Sergey Matsotsky: The system should identify inconsistencies and create business processes for their cleaning.

For example, the register of the population that the Federal Tax Service makes is a system for systems. That is, this is a system that for all GIS should unambiguously confirm a specific person. Man is one of the most important entities. If the issue is resolved with her, a lot of disagreements will go away.

But then the issues of real estate, cars begin. And in each of these areas there is a huge amount of such abnormality.

Unfortunately, many people do not understand that it is impossible to make a model of state data. First of all, it's too big for that. Secondly, this fundamentally contradicts the logic of public administration in how the powers and responsibilities of departments are delegated. They should be able to determine their own formats, solutions by a large number of questions, because their business processes depend on this. If you take this function from them, they will become simply structures that will not be able to be responsible for managing some sphere of life.

Actually, the national data management system, in many ways, is an attempt to create such a system of self-cleaning.

Sergey Matsotsky: Firstly, we just do not criticize. Secondly, I would like to know from those who criticize, do they know what is happening there?

Sergey Matsotsky: The National Data Management System is directly moving to the new version of electronic government, to the 4th version of SMEV. In fact, the 4th SMEV and the creation of departmental showcases are, it seems to me, a national data management system that was invented a couple of years ago. It just took quite a long time to create and implement it.

The naive idea of ​ ​ creating a large state data lake and finding happiness will not work. The challenge is real, with the size of the country and the diversity that exists. She is not yet particularly resolved in the world.

Sergey Matsotsky: You know, I like what the Ministry of Digital Development is doing now. For example, a digital ID. If we, however, have a state recognized identifier that everyone will have on the phone - this is really cool. I dream of the moment when I will stop remembering where I put my documents. I mean not even original documents, but scan images that I have stored in cloud services, because it's inconvenient to use all this.

In fact, this is only the outermost part of the story. But it is clear that it gives a huge impetus to all kinds of online transactions and services that will arise. This will be a huge breakthrough.

The second thing I really like is the idea of a legally relevant electronic document flow. It seems to me that here we have a chance to become almost the first country in the world that will make almost all its document flow both B2B, B2C, G2B, and G2C legally significant, and most importantly, digital. That is, there will be an exchange of structural documents, not scans.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes, electronic documents are exchanged, but only at the end of the period they must be printed and signed, because a check may come that will require paper versions. For this to work fully, you will have to change a lot of standards. For example, adopt a law on electronic archives, which will allow you to destroy paper documents and create electronic ones with the same level of notariness.

For example, I no longer even dream, but work on the time when it will be possible for any checking agency to send a link as in Dropbox, forming a folder of necessary documents. In many ways, this story about the same electronic archive - this can be a huge catalyst for a completely different quality of service. Both for individuals and for legal entities.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes, of course. Moreover, which is automatically formed in the process of transactions. After all, the biggest problem is that the archive does not want to be specially formed. I want to make it going in the process of transactions in a natural way.

Sergey Matsotsky: Not only. Generally around everything. For example, as an organization, I would like any documents from me to be automatically archived in the form in which it is convenient for me so that I can always find them. It is necessary that in such archive mechanisms of various search that documents were automatically tagged that I could collect electronic business, etc., etc. there worked.

Sergey Matsotsky: You know, and yes, and no. On the one hand, perhaps, but, on the other, no one has yet implemented. You look at the same Dropbox - it is universal, but uncomfortable. It does not have a huge number of functions that could be done: decompose documents automatically into folders, do automatic tagging.

There was such an application "In the pocket" - I really liked it. You could put the paperwork in there, and the passport looked like a passport cover, and the birth certificate, like a birth certificate cover. Immediately more convenient - poked and it is clear what folder is stored in.

Sergey Matsotsky: We are actively discussing this with both the Russian Post and banks. As an expert, I participated in the working group of the Ministry of Digital Affairs on the preparation of standards for this history. It turns me on a lot. It seems to me that a big breakthrough can be made in this part.

Sergey Matsotsky: It seems to me that the new portal of public services is really the next generation platform, because it is a real low code, and this is an active use of BPM as processing. I believe in such low code stories. It seems to me that they will make it possible at a completely different level of dynamics and quality to create complex process services.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes, I just expect that officials themselves at the regional and federal levels will be able to deconstruct services. That's the key idea. BPM is the same executable mechanism. That is, it does not need to be recompiled, retested. You changed the script, and he started working right away.

Sergey Matsotsky: Consolidation of management in one hand in this case is impossible. The activity is too diverse. It's like IT directors, which we talked about above. Still, it is necessary to delegate a large number of powers to departments. Moreover, in many cases, IT in departments is not IT on its own, but is the implementation of a particular mechanism. As soon as you take this mechanism and application from them, they cease to be responsible for what they do. Therefore, it is impossible to select.

But what is being done today in the "electric train," in the broad sense, that is, EPSU, SMEV, etc., is the basic infrastructure, connecting to which large departments can save a large number of their resources, carrying out interagency interaction and implementing their own systems.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes, ideology appeared and new ideas appeared.

Sergey Matsotsky: What did Mishustin do in the tax? First of all, he came up with how it is possible with the help of modern IT to fundamentally change the tax system. Moreover, not just a tax control system, but a tax administration system and a tax monitoring system.

The blue dream of the Federal Tax Service is that companies conduct their accounting directly on the website of the tax service. In fact, the tax monitoring system that the Federal Tax Service makes today for all major corporations brings this dream closer. It cannot be said that they redone the tax system. But they used technology for a fundamentally different way of interaction and administration.

Mishustin is great in that, as a tax official, he came up with this, and, as an IT shnik, he was able to realize this. It seems to me that for this you need to understand very well what, for what and how you are doing.

Sergey Matsotsky: Of course. And technology has ripened, and people have ripened. The same Shadaev, I think, if he had not worked in recent years in the Moscow region, "on earth," would have understood much worse what and how it could be realized. It is very important to understand not only how to, but also how not to. And what barriers there are.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes, I really want to believe that in the next 2-3 years in the field of digitalization of public administration we will make a big leap.

Sergey Matsotsky: What for? It seems to me that the Ministry of Digital Affairs in this regard is quite enough.

Sergey Matsotsky: I don't really know to what extent the Ministry of Digital is now engaged in telecom. It seems to me that their main focus is digital public administration.

Sergey Matsotsky: Well, probably, although I am not in the topic... Recently, there have been discussions that it would be good to do some special judicial or law enforcement agencies that could deal with IT issues. This probably makes some sense.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes. In all these checks, one of the key discussions revolves around the cost of work.

Sergey Matsotsky: For example, make a limited number of accredited expert organizations that understand IT. Maybe we need courts that will be allocated to deal with such issues.

Sergey Matsotsky: At the level of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, in the commission that is developing a new package of measures to support the IT industry.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes. Regarding the development of the industry, all the main players participate there. This is a very open discussion, by the way. I would even say, very frank. Law enforcement history, of course, is the most complex and sensitive.

Sergey Matsotsky: No, by the way (laughs).

Sergey Matsotsky: In different ways. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it interferes. It helps in the sense that we can bear our ideas and be heard. Does it help in the most banal sense - that someone picks up the phone and calls somewhere? No, that's not how it works. Sometimes in this sense it even interferes, so just in case you think - let's go in a purely formal way.

Sergey Matsotsky: It seems to me, as usual, everything is fine in moderation. The idea of ​ ​ "let's do everything on the Russian chip tomorrow" is, of course, utopia. And, in general, idiocy. On the other hand, in some matters we were very lazy. If we have any problems, we better pay more, but let them call us, come and fix everything.

At the same time, there are a large number of companies in the world that, for example, do not buy Oracle support, because it is very expensive. They buy the current version, make a system on it, and then create their own support team, and after 10 years, conditionally, if they need, they buy the next version. Support costs about 20% per year, which means they save at least twice in these 10 years. We have not yet accepted this.

Acceleration of import substitution processes can make it necessary to switch to a more advanced microservice architecture, to open source, to modern noSQL databases. These are those things that, from my point of view, today require wide and active use.

But, in general, there are three cases when import substitution is justified. The first is just physical risk.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes, or where they can stop supplying technology. Let's say we want to produce backbone routers on our own, because these are not just critical infrastructure objects, but super-critical critical infrastructure objects. In this case, let's reproach and do it.

And, let's say, when we start buying servers on Elbrus for absolutely ordinary horizontal applications, as in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, such a decision seems doubtful to me. I'm not against Elbrus. It probably plays a very important role, especially in military systems. It's just another topic.

The second case is to replace imports where we can do it relatively easily and relatively inexpensively, but efficiently.

And the third is where we can make some breakthroughs. We're inventive guys. In Soviet times, I managed to work 7 years in the central geophysical expedition of the USSR Ministry of Oil and Gas Industry. This at that time was the largest computer user in the country, because oil geophysics is a huge amount of computing. Reflected waves are written, and they reproduce what is inside. To solve such problems, it was possible to go two ways. The first is to buy Cray, which was designed for such calculations. But it was very expensive, and we couldn't afford it. They didn't sell it to us... Therefore, we used ordinary EU computers, only to them we had the so-called matrix processors, which considered individual operations, but 100 times faster. But there were such operations before 80-90%. So we got almost the same performance as on Cray.

Maybe think in this direction today? Maybe we can find zones and technological niches in which we can dramatically change either user characteristics or speed, that is, productivity. And if these niches are big enough, we can get a big effect. Here, I think, some sighting is important.

Sergey Matsotsky: Virtualization. We have a good school in this area, starting with Parallels. And Open Stack as a platform. And there are many people who understand this. In our company "Rock," including.

PostgreSQL I think it's a good story, too. But not everywhere, and not always. Oracle is so easy not to replace, but in many cases it is possible.

Sergey Matsotsky: I would say, not in banks, but in very high-loaded and very large-scale systems. But nevertheless, we replaced, for example, in Electronic Hospital, and this, in general, is a large system.

Sergey Matsotsky: In the AIS "Tax-3" - impossible.

Sergey Matsotsky: Nothing. Not possible.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes, you just need to write a new system on another architecture.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes.

Sergey Matsotsky: At the stage of thinking about the idea.

Sergey Matsotsky: Not fast. About 5 years. Another thing is that it can be written in parts.

Sergey Matsotsky: Communication networks, first of all. Because it might turn out that tomorrow we'll be turned off and that's all. I'm not just talking about vulnerabilities, but about physical supply constraints.

Sergey Matsotsky: I do not really believe in this.

Sergey Matsotsky: We have been shown this opportunity several times by the Israelis on the example of Iran. Or most recently, a hacker group turned off an American pipeline. Jokes aside, the story is serious.

Sergey Matsotsky: The understanding has come that you can't and don't want to go further. Not interested.

Sergey Matsotsky: I wanted to do interesting big projects, including working with the state. I wanted to make the company structure much more mobile. And Karachinsky wanted to hold an IPO, continue to build a classic IT integrator. It seemed impossible and uninteresting to me.

Sergey Matsotsky: Honestly, I don't know. We have no problems, but there are no topics for interaction.

Sergey Matsotsky: For me, they are a financial partner, an investor.

Sergey Matsotsky: Firstly, I wanted to have a certain level of comfort, a pillow. Secondly, if you work with state projects, you want to have a little about-state status.

Sergey Matsotsky: Of course, for them this is an absolutely investment story. Plus, they really wanted to have a technological asset that they did not have.

Sergey Matsotsky: I can't talk about this, but they are not fast.

Sergey Matsotsky: Where are we going without him? We work in e-government projects, and Rostelecom is a single operator of e-government.

Sergey Matsotsky: I believe that it is almost impossible to organize competitions in such a topic.

Sergey Matsotsky: Niches are open, but let's be honest. I still received a significant part of IBS assets, that is, I did not start from scratch. Rubytech is a former IBS infrastructure development division. Arenata shot very hard over the past year, but nevertheless was created three years ago. BFT is not new either.

Sergey Matsotsky: Of course, no. We bought Avanpost. IT_ONE was also bought, and very expensive.

Sergey Matsotsky: Yes, about. I can't comment more accurately.

Sergey Matsotsky: In 2020, the bulk of the income came to Rubytech. But Arena grows very quickly, BFT grows well. We expect that the dynamics of the "Super Code" and IT_ONE in 2021 will also be serious.

Sergey Matsotsky: In different companies in different ways. If we talk about Rubytech, then banks are in first place among customers, and the state is in second. If we talk about Arena, then here are banks, the state, and retail. If we talk about IT_ONE, then these are two key customers - RT Labs and Russian Post. If we talk about Avanpost, then there are a lot of customers, and, in fact, this is a reflection of the structure of our economy.