TAdviser SummIT 2021: plenary part
November 23, 2021 was the next TAdviser SummIT. His theme was "Results of the year and plans 2022." The event was attended by leading IT specialists and representatives of major companies, both from among suppliers and customers. Despite the restrictions associated with the epidemiological situation, the plenary part of the summit was held offline. The reports were divided into thematic blocks: "Technologies," "Digital Transformation of the State" and "Digital Transformation of Business." Speakers shared specific experiences in responding to current challenges and conceptual views on various issues.
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Client-centric state, import substitution and other trends 2021
In addition to traditional reports, the event held a stage interview with Maksut Shadaev, Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation. He announced next year the creation of a state-owned lake that aggregates depersonal data, including from regions, for subsequent processing and the formation of reliable detailed analytics.
Part of the data is planned to be received free of charge from business - the corresponding law is now under consideration. In return, the business will have access to important information for it. There are also plans to organize a data marketplace. It is assumed. That it may appear in the middle of 2022. At the same time, Maksut Shadaev noted that only the state can verify the depersonalization of data. Thus, the state marketplace becomes the only option for business to commercialize their customers' data.
The speaker noted that IT budgets are expected to grow further, but in existing realities, it is unlikely that it will be possible to implement plans to increase spending on Russian solutions by 4 times. Another problem noted in the report is personnel shortages. A special state program for training high school students will also help to combat the shortage of qualified personnel. They will be able to learn programming and other IT disciplines for free.
Maksut Shadaev touched on some aspects of import substitution. In particular, he said that the ministry will seek mandatory compatibility of software included in the register and Russian processors. According to him, "it will be, but not simultaneously.
Alexander Albychev, deputy head of the Federal Treasury of the Russian Federation, talking about the department's digital transformation projects, mentioned the centralization of accounting. One of the goals of the project was "to bring 5,500 organizations subordinate to the government into the perimeter over a three-year cycle. There were three options for interaction: either accounting is fully maintained by the Treasury, or the agency provides its product for accounting; the third option is integration for organizations with a mature IT system. Over the three-year period of the project, electronic document flow increased from 63.7% of the total number of documents to 96.3%.
Alexander Albychev also mentioned a joint project with the Central Bank, which can be considered key for the department - a system of treasury payments. The result of the transformation was the transfer of all transactions that took place using the systems of the Central Bank to the perimeter of the Treasury. Thus, it was possible to increase the level of liquidity. Now payment transactions are not "broken in half, but occur in the same loop."
Elena Gromova The director of the IT department spoke about the client-centric state. Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation She presented a single platform for providing state financial support measures. Subsidies are allocated to both legal entities and individual entrepreneurs, as well as individuals - manufacturers of goods, services, works.
Through the personal account, the service provides targeted information to users about what support they can count on depending on their area of activity and legal status. An application for subsidies of 80% will be formed automatically, you only need to indicate data that government agencies do not have, for example, a description of a specific project.
The platform is planned to be fully launched from January 1, 2022. It will present options for subsidies that are allocated from the federal budget, but over time it is planned to develop the service and add "regional" options there.
One of the most important aspects of the platform's functioning, its creators consider the assessment of service and the results of subsidies, as well as the analysis of related data. Subsequently, this information, processed using artificial intelligence, will allow you to form analytics, as well as make changes to the subsidy policy to achieve the best results.
The results of the year on the work of his organization were summed up by Evgeny Charkin, Deputy General Director of Russian Railways. He said that the company's digital transformation strategy adopted in 2019 was adjusted, and by the end of the year its updated version should be approved.
 | The main goal of the transformation is to transform the activities of Russian Railways on the basis of digital technologies by building effective internal processes, and creating digital products for existing and future market segments, "he said. |  |
In practice, this should be expressed in the digital leadership of the company, strengthening market positions, increasing efficiency (including thanks to the development of "small" technologies and the withdrawal of people from dangerous areas), as well as technological sovereignty (partly this intersects with the topic of import substitution).
Speaking about the results of 2021, Yevgeny Charkin said that the number of customers who completely switched to electronic document management has increased in the freight transportation segment, and now it accounts for 90.3% of the total number of customers. The flagship project, the electronic trading platform, continues to develop. The number of car deliveries within its framework has grown 4 times. Interest in electronic interaction is also growing in the field of passenger transportation - this is how 68% of tickets are issued. This is facilitated by the enterprise portal and the mobile client application. In pilot mode, the project "MaaS ticket solutions" was launched in the Samara region. During the optimization of internal business processes, voice services were introduced to plan the work of locomotive crews.
In the coming years, Russian Railways plans to develop CRM in freight transportation, introduce artificial intelligence technologies in the management of production processes and implement an end-to-end process for managing the life cycle of investment projects.
| | We hope that this will never end, because we see this as a continuous adaptation to constantly emerging, new changes. | |
The company moves towards its own Data lake and migrates to the physical cluster. It develops code writing standards and maintenance regulations, as well as mechanisms for integrating Data lake with DWH. There are plans for 2022 to replicate data from DWH and transfer all key source systems to Data lake.
To manage the quality of the digital product, the bank has developed a comprehensive approach that includes multi-level testing. For this purpose, a common corporate methodology was developed and testing reporting was implemented.
The issue of unified communications at Renaissance Credit was resolved using Cisco Webex. Previously, the company used Skype4business, which had to be abandoned due to the fact that Microsoft suspended support for its decision.
| | They argued about whether it was safe, whether it was necessary. However, a serious increase in the level of maturity of "hazardous" software and its deep penetration into the technological landscapes of major Russian and foreign companies put an end to these discussions, "he said. | |
The open source market is growing. One of the drivers of such growth is the process of digital transformation of companies. For many, it involves migration to clouds. Open source products are built on a more modern technology stack and are better compatible with cloud solutions. Such products were most in demand in the gaming industry and the media segment. In addition, epidemiological limitations contributed to the demand for open source in the field of training. And in healthcare, open source products, according to analysts, will come to the fore in the next 5 years in terms of the volume of attracted investments.
Applying open source banks in also becomes a global trend. In particular, VTB uses 45 such solutions for, in virtualizations, databases workflow and other services. Mikhail Khasin also stressed that the difficulties of scaling open solutions, their insecurity and problems with support and integration with proprietary software are just myths.
Key trends in the development of his company were shared by Igor Kozlov, vice president of information technology, AFK Sistema. He spoke about how the digital transformation is happening and what tasks will be solved in the next 2-3 years. Since the company adheres to the principles of ESG (environmental, social, governance) in its activities, they want to develop a system of accounting for relevant goals and indicators.
Another trend is the work on corporate information systems. The planned result of this activity is to improve the quality of decisions made through the timely processing and availability of data, in particular, management analytics and dashboards. Separately, Igor Kozlov noted the development of corporate property accounting systems and investment projects as a general market trend.
Attention is also being paid to the issue of staff mobility. Igor Kozlov emphasized that, although this is especially relevant right now, in the era of epidemiological restrictions, the opportunity to fully work not in the office should always be. After all, an employee may not be at his workplace for many reasons, for example, because he is on a business trip. To enable remote operation, a single mobile application was developed with access to all the company's main information systems. And for the mobility of employees inside the office space, AFK Sistema develops wireless networks based on Wi-Fi 6 and 5G.
The company's infrastructure migrates to the clouds. In addition, critical services and data channels are reserved. AFK Sistema is also actively working with innovations. The offices have introduced the BioMCUD system, which allows you to go to corporate premises using face biometrics, and not a traditional pass. It also has its own corporate voice assistant, with which you can manage equipment, order passes, schedule and organize meetings, and maintain communication with colleagues.
Five myths about the transformation were considered by Vladislav Belyaev, Chief information officer of the Cherkizovo group of companies. He offered his view of digitalization precisely through the prism of myths about it.
| | Everything related to IT, with digital technologies, has been in the focus of our company for many years. For example, we have fully robotic production, which has no analogues in Russia. And we have been using machine vision for more than 3 years, "he shared. | |
Myths about digital transformation are created, first of all, by vendors. But this also involves integrators, consultants, and all other participants in the IT market. On the one hand, this is not so bad: thanks to such attention, additional resources and finance are attracted. The reverse side is false expectations of digitalization.
Digital transformation, according to Vladislav Belyaev, is not reduced to the introduction of new technologies. It is important to reconfigure the business itself: processes and people, and in the latter case, both employees and customers. Only by managing all these components can you get fundamentally new products, services and markets.
It is necessary to abandon the idea that digital transformation is fast. In fact, this is a long and complex process, involving the constant search for various solutions and the adaptation of such solutions to corporate needs and interests. Also, do not oppose the digital transformation to the "traditional" IT or think that they are not connected in any way. It is possible to achieve a positive effect only with a thoughtful integration of current solutions with new ones.
Nikolai Galkin, Chief information officer, Itella, summed up his results of the year. He noted that his company, like most others, faced the challenges of the covid era, but was able to successfully cope with them. He announced some details of how Itella solved the problems taking into account the specifics of the company's activities in his report.
In 2020, the number of client requests here decreased, but at the beginning of 2021 it began to grow sharply, twice as much as expectations. To cope with this load, the company has implemented a number of projects, including the development and implementation of the SDP system in its personal account, which allows customers to independently make a preliminary assessment of the planned improvements in order to decide how appropriate they are.
A serious challenge for the company was the problems with transportation, which in the pandemic were only decreasing and rising in price. Since Itella's own fleet is limited, the company had to integrate with exchange portals, where contracts for the transportation of goods are concluded on the basis of tenders.
Now Itella, having coped with new challenges, is stabilizing its activities. Speaking about plans for the near future, Nikolai Galkin said that in 2022 they will develop their own ecosystem here. The main criterion for evaluating changes remains their practical result: "Implementations are not needed for the sake of implementations - they must bring profit."
Road to cars
The simple path to machine learning was pointed out by Otari Melikishvili, the leader of the food direction, SberCloud. He noted that "machine learning does not work in a vacuum: you can't just do some service on its basis and immediately get a profile." It must be a microservice that connects to the current business application.
According to Otari Melikishvili, there are several ways to get a ready-made microservice:
- In-house development is the easiest and most common option in Russia. But the project may take more than a year, and the estimated budget will be at least $1 million.
- AutoML is one of the fastest options, in this case there is no need for a developer and no need to write code, everything is done using the framework and ready-made cloud services.
- The solution is developed on a competitive basis through profile platforms, for example, Kaggle. The main advantages of this option are the relatively low cost and the ability to choose the best of several ready-made solutions.
- Outsourcing. At this moment, there are quite specialized system integrators with relevant competencies.
- Ready-made AI services. Cloud providers and marketplaces offer a large number of ready-made solutions.
This is the optimal combination of acceptable cost and speed of implementation, but it is worth being prepared for some problems, for example, with scaling.
SberCloud presented its solution - the cloud platform ML Space. It can run distributed machine learning processes on more than a thousand GPUs. It has been available for AI-based service developers since December 12.
What were the prerequisites of the project and how was the ML Space platform developed?
Otari Melikishvili: In any development of software products, including ML-development, there are several main metrics that the development teams look at to determine the effectiveness of the process. This is the speed of making changes to production, the cost of creating and supporting changes and their quality, as well as the level of duplication of development by different teams - the latter is important to minimize.
ML Space allows you to work transparently and safely with all four of these metrics. In particular, we have a convenient toolkit that allows you to reduce time to market by 30% when developing AI applications. We also have tools that allow you to clearly track and control the cost of making changes to production. There are also tools that allow you to check, monitor and maintain production of ready-made applications developed by teams. Finally, there is a MarketPlace for machine learning "artifacts" and ready-made services, which reduces the level of development duplication in teams.
Your report presented several ways to obtain ML solutions. How different are they financially? Is it possible to voice approximate numbers?
Otari Melikishvili: Yes, right. I talked about five options for how to make microservices based on artificial intelligence to any business. Of course, they vary significantly both in cost and in implementation speed. For example, the fastest way to embed in business process intelligence is to find a ready-made service on the MarketPlace. Developing your own ML Platform will, of course, be the most expensive way to implement. Introducing speech synthesis into the company's processes will cost from 0.12 cop per 100 characters.
Developing speech synthesis or recognition from scratch is a fairly long and expensive process. To do this, you need your own team and your own platforms for ML development. As a result, it will take a lot of money, as well as weeks or even months of time. In my opinion, the ideal path is this: if there is a specific understanding of what AI service is needed, then first you need to look for what is ready. If this is not the case or the finished one is not suitable for various reasons, then it is better to order a turnkey through an integrator or create a championship at DS Works.
If the company plans to independently develop competencies in the development and support of any AI services, then the easiest option is to take a ready-made platform for these tasks, for example, ML Space, and develop competencies and development of such services without thinking about IT support in this part.
IT Companies About Staffing Hunger, Platforms, and Clouds
About what gives the transition to the cloud to large companies, talked Grigory Zaporozhsky, head of support and development of sales of the cloud business, MTS. He recalled that the business took a course towards switching to online and remote communications long before the pandemic - the new conditions only accelerated these processes. As a result, IT scalability, flexibility, and information security are increasingly important . Under such conditions, clouds become an important and convenient tool.
Among other things, clouds allow you to quickly innovate, reduce time-to-market and move from the buy model to the subscription model, which helps you scale your business quickly. Cloud solutions reduce IT costs by a quarter.
| | Business continuity is ensured, and downtime and disruption are reduced. Companies are exempt from the need to independently implement the requirements of regulators. Thus, the risks of financial and reputational losses are minimized. | |
As successful examples of the introduction of cloud solutions, Grigory Zaporozhsky cited the experience of the Your Home hypermarket. Due to epidemiological restrictions, the load on his site increased 2.5 times. After that, it was decided to transfer all online trading services to the cloud for stability of operation. The site began to cope with peak loads successfully. A regular data backup is also started. Another example is the company "Dymov." Due to the specifics of its activities, the organization was rather disparate. With the help of the cloud, IT resources were consolidated and centralized access was provided. The cost of operating IT equipment decreased by 25%.
| | Everyone is used to looking at ultimate efficiency. For example, to improve the quality of customer service. And that's right, without that, everything else makes no sense. But during the digital transformation, data is generated. And if they are lost, then the effect will not even be zero - it will be negative. Previously, at least an offline copy remained, and now it is not. | |
That's why reliable backup is one of the most important conditions for digital transformation. This is a process that requires constant monitoring, not "software that can be delivered and forgotten." Outdated solutions result in failure:
- 37% of backpack tasks;
- 34% of recovery tasks;
- 58% of restores occur with errors.
In addition, it is often not taken into account that in addition to resistance to external attacks, data should be protected from human error, gland failure, accidents and disasters. Veeam offers its backup platform that takes into account all these factors and ensures reliable storage of data.
Sergey Kasaev, Director of Key Customers, YADRO, speaks confidently and arguably about the leadership of his company in the segment of iron developers and manufacturers. The key to such success was several factors. First of all, the globality of the technologies used. It is important to communicate with partners and analyze the global market, products and activities of competitors, to be in continuous contact with leading analysts. In other words, it is not always necessary to create your own from scratch. The same applies to the experience of employees: YADRO employs specialists who previously collaborated with many large international players in the IT market, so they can bring their past solid experience to work.
Another important component of success, Sergey Kasaev considers the locality of the examination. At YADRO, the whole cycle of development, production and maintenance is fully kept at its own capacity.
In addition to the demand for products and high ratings of experts, another proof of YADRO's leadership in its industry is the fact that the company is wealthy - it functions without the financial participation of the state.
| | But the experience of entering into highly loaded structures has shown that not all the load can be unified and implemented. It seemed that container virtualization and microservices would dominate enterprise infrastructures, but this did not work out, the speaker shares. - Therefore, we more often and more often use specialized solutions for various technologies. In order to maintain the convenience that virtualization has brought, component infrastructures are already being developed. | |
Viktor Urusov also explained some details of how the company solved various problems. In particular, the apparent inability to do without Oracle was eliminated using Postgres Professional solutions and charding technology. The company is switching to a domestic product in terms of microarchitecture. Now porting part of the systems to Elbrus processors.
| | He will incredibly "overheat" - now it is impossible to find a specialist for acceptable money. We ran into it ourselves. | |
You can reduce the amount of development using low code. Vladimir Bochkarev considers its use one of the noticeable trends of the last 2 years, because low code provides, among other things, "easy entry" into business applications.
TEGRUS drew attention to the market for managed services. According to forecasts, its volume by 2024 will be about 90 billion rubles, that is, it will grow threefold compared to last year. Moving in this direction, the company together with MerliOnCloud formed a service - the rental of allocated infrastructure. Vladimir Bochkarev drew the attention of the audience to the fact that business in modern conditions requires continuous improvement of infrastructure for full-fledged functioning. TEGRUS services can provide such improvement.
What does TEGRUS offer as part of leasing dedicated infrastructure?
Vladimir Bochkarev: TEGRUS together with MerliOnCloud offers the leasing service of dedicated infrastructure Dedicated Infrastructure, which includes storage, server and network equipment, software, technical support services. The service includes the provision of a complex of IT equipment and system software, services for the implementation of the complex when placing equipment in the data center of the customer or a third-party provider, technical support for the complex with the required SLA.
TEGRUS and MerliOnCloud provide a complete service start-up cycle: identify customer needs, generate specifications, purchase the necessary equipment and software, install it, and, if necessary, support the migration of information systems to a new dedicated infrastructure.
And what are the accompanying financial conditions?
Vladimir Bochkarev: The service is provided for a period of 3 to 5 years. The software and hardware complex remains owned by the service provider throughout the project period. Payment for services is carried out on a monthly basis and begins from the moment of launch of the software and hardware complex. Technical support services are included in the price.
The 3-5 year service reduces the total cost of ownership of the infrastructure by up to 15%. And also, unlike leasing, does not require the collection of additional documents and approvals with financial organizations.
Infrastructure for public systems
Tatyana Kandelaki, Director of Digital Development of Goznak JSC, spoke about Goznak's strategy for the development of digital products, in particular, about plans to expand the infrastructure for hosting state systems and services.
| | Goznak is well known as the leader of the Russian market for the production of protected products with 200 years of experience, she says. - While maintaining the main business direction, we are actively developing digital products, among which a special place is occupied by the provision of services of our data centers and cloud services to ensure the functioning of our customers' information systems. | |
The trend in digitalization of state and commercial organizations, as well as trends in reducing capital costs due to increased operating costs, ensure the sustainable development of the Russian data center market. When placing critical information systems, in addition to the requirements imposed by regulators for the class of security of information systems and protection of personal data, the reliability of the data center in which the information system is located is important.
The reliability of the data center is classified in accordance with the international TIER standard, which is confirmed by the relevant international certificates. Most Russian commercial data centers have TIER III certificates with 99,982% availability, which is equivalent to no more than 1.6 hours of downtime for one year. Behind these figures are the costs of data center operators to create and maintain a reserved data center technology infrastructure.
In practice, downtime is often caused not so much by failures in the process infrastructure of the data center as by the breakdown of communication channels due to damage to fiber-optic cables in the city that connect server and network equipment to the outside world. That is why when designing information systems and selecting a data center, it is necessary to use two independent communication channels.
| | The services of our data centers and cloud services are aimed at customers who pay special attention to reliability and security, "explains Tatyana Kandelaki. - So, Goznak is a stable company with state participation, our data processing centers are opened on the basis of protected facilities "Goznak" with paramilitary security and enhanced security systems. The first data center in Moscow was opened in 2012, since then we have accumulated experience in servicing critical information systems based on physical and virtual infrastructure. In the summer of 2021, a new Goznak data center was opened in St. Petersburg. Both of our data centers correspond to TIER III category and have international TIER III Facility certificates issued by Uptime Institute, which confirms the high reliability of the data center technology infrastructure. | |
According to Tatyana, the company helps customers reduce capital costs by providing services from simple placement of customer equipment in the data center, rental and maintenance of equipment, to cloud services of the virtual data center.
| | Our plans are not limited to two data centers, we plan to develop the infrastructure, increase its fault tolerance and geographical distribution. In addition, we are following the trend for the development of state information platforms and consider Goznak as one of the operators that ensure the reliable functioning of these platforms, she assured. | |
Artificial intelligence will advise doctors
SberMedAI has developed a system to support medical decision-making - the MDDC medical digital diagnostic center. This center allows the doctor to make decisions based on the received data of primary admission, instrumental and laboratory diagnostics.
MDDC integrates with major information systems and data sources. Artificial intelligence allows you to quickly analyze data and issue reasonable conclusions on preliminary diagnoses. It is also possible to get a second opinion, the organization of an online consultation.
The CT Lung service is part of the MDDC and has shown itself well in the diagnosis of COVID-19, in addition, AI algorithms reveal the early stage of oncology. Which SberMedAI services, in addition to the above, are the most effective and in demand now?
Igal Zuk, CEO, SberMedAI: Modern medicine requires an integrated approach that MDDC can give. The medical digital diagnostic center includes more than 50 products, the following algorithms became the most popular (if you do not take into account "CT Lungs"):
These algorithms are aimed at identifying the most common and socially significant diseases, have high accuracy.
Learn more about how data warehouses and their transmission paths are protected.
Igal Zuk: Work is done with impersonal data! The maximum is the date of birth (to understand the age of the patient). Data exchange between medical institutions takes place according to the DICOM protocol, through secure communication channels. VipNET MDDC also implements the function of sending processed DICOM files to PACS medical institutions.
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