The head of VDEL left a post because of disagreements with shareholders

Mikhail Kozlov since December, 2009 holding a position of the area manager of VDEL in Russia and the CIS left the company since July 1, 2010. He told about it in a conversation with the correspondent of TAdviser. According to Mikhail Kozlov, the lack of mutual understanding with shareholders became the main reason of his leaving from a position. "When I came to work to the company, had certain arrangements with shareholders concerning structure of divisions which were not executed further", - he explained.

Is about transfer of VDEL to the strategic partner on behalf of VNIINS of V.V. Solomatin of division of NCPR ("The national center of support and development") which took place in June of this year. Let's remind what since 2003 represents to VDEL in Russia, the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe a number of developers and software suppliers open source, and VNIINS – is engaged in creation of secure information systems and distribution kits of the Linux operating system for the Russian schools.

Mikhail Kozlov: "Reorganization of VDEL upset my plans for development of the company"

After transfer of technology division for VDEL only functions of the representative of the western vendors in the Russian market whereas the NCPR is engaged in practical developments de facto remain. "Sale of VNIINS of technology divisions of VDEL and other aspects of the carried-out reorganization essentially change the concept of work of VDEL and complicate implementation of my plans", - Kozlov commented. According to him, the decision on the termination of his contract was made by mutual consent of the parties.

At the same time, in the blog Mikhail notes that for a year of work in VDEL it managed to achieve noticeable results. He puts himself attraction in VDEL of a professional team of ex-colleague from Microsoft and VMware down to credit. Also in this row creation of a portfolio from "the best in the class" open software products, start of essentially new affiliate program, work on education of Chief information officers concerning advantage of the open source software for business, implementation of testing of MSVSphere OS and other are listed. "At the beginning of this year growth of business of VDEL is measured by two-digit digits", - the ex-top manager of the company summarized the record of service.

Mikhail Kozlov negatively answered a question whether he considers that VDEL in Russia lost fight for implementation of Open Source in a public sector. According to him while plans of the state in this direction "are muffled" also the state "was not defined that actually it wants", it is difficult to judge also winners and losers in this story.

So far, he considers, only separate attempts of use alternative dominating in the market of software products become. At the same time mixing of concepts of "open" and "free" software remains the general system mistake: the first means the open code together with support of vendor, the second – existence of community of free developers who do not take a guarantee for a certain level of service (SLA). According to Kozlov, application of the free software in serious projects is simply unreasonable.

In Mikhail Kozlov's career it is not the first conflict with shareholders which ended with its leaving from the held post. So, to VDEL for the similar reasons it left VMware, having considered that the vendor is engaged in the Russian business not rather actively. To VMware Mikhail Kozlov cooperated with Trend Micro also as the area manager in local market. So far, according to it released a post in VDEL remains vacant.

Mikhail Kozlov was not defined rather further development of career yet and is engaged in consideration of offers. "During the work in the market of high technologies I helped a large number of the known world companies to begin to work or continue the development in Russia and the CIS, for example: Alfresco, Fiserv, Microsoft, Red Hat, Trend Micro, VMware. Further it would be interesting to me to continue to be engaged in attraction to Russia of dominant technologies and development of the new markets", - he reported. According to him, this direction is perspective in spite of the fact that the investment climate did not recover from crisis yet.