Russian IT industry in the era of change: First results and development trends

The conference was opened by Valentin Makarov, President of NP RUSSOFT. In his opening remarks, he stated that over the past six months, the situation has changed. Panic is gone, the industry is in a position of choice. Or participants in the Russian IT market continue to serve the products of world leaders, making their own systems only in those niches that are left free. Or still try to become world leaders in the ongoing breakdown of the existing world economic structure, and try to come forward by offering competitive products on world markets. Valentin Makarov stressed that this requires will, support from the state - information and financial, and ambitions aimed at becoming leaders. And he invited the participants of the press conference to think together about how successful import substitution is, how to reorient exports to other regions of the world, how to become world leaders in cooperation with Indian and Chinese manufacturers, and at the same time avoid the transition from the service industry of American and other Western companies to the industry serving Indian or Chinese vendors.

Pavel Kalyakin, CEO, MyOffice, shared the practice of switching to Russian office software, spoke about the experience of implementation among the largest customers - VTB and VK.

He listed the problems associated with the current situation: the departure of large foreign vendors, the lack of the ability to buy licenses, support, download updates, an increase in information security risks - malicious lines began to appear in the open source libraries, which began to fall into products. The speaker called the discrediting of the cloud approach to IT development, also associated with the sharp departure of Western cloud vendors from Russia, especially unpleasant.

Pavel Kalyakin spoke about the large-scale transition of VTB Bank to MyOffice. This is a long-term project, as a result of which thousands of bank employees work on the Russian solution . The bank acquired 100 thousand licenses "MyOffice Professional" and has already implemented them in 20 branches of the bank and 1300 operating offices throughout the country. This deal has become the largest in history for the entire domestic IT market. VTB Bank systematically approached the choice of information systems - the development of the infrastructure project took 1.5 years.

According to Vadim Kulik, Deputy President and Chairman of the Board of VTB Bank, VTB became the first Russian bank to carry out such a large-scale installation of Russian office software for its employees. The representative of the bank noted that according to the results of testing domestic solutions of office software, MyOffice products were selected as the most compliant with all technological requirements of the bank.

In addition to a large project at VTB, MyOffice has completed the integration of MyOffice editors into Mail and Cloud Mail.ru - now users of these VK services have the opportunity not only to view documents in the cloud, but also to edit, as well as download the mobile version. Edits made in other office software are also displayed when the document is opened in the cloud mail.ru. Users of the service have become available to install directly from the Cloud interface of free office software "MyOffice Standard. Home version "for working with documents on your PC in offline mode. The product is compatible with popular operating systems and supports all major document formats.

MyOffice and VK are systematically expanding cooperation - the use of Mail.ru domestic office software in the Mail and Cloud services has become a logical development of technological partnership. MyOffice products cope with high loads - while Cloud Mail.ru users view and edit millions of text and table files per month. We are ready to continue to work smoothly and effectively with VK, to be a reliable partner of the company, regardless of external conditions, said Pavel Kalyakin.

Elena Bocherova, Executive Director, Cyberprotect, stated that there are no international competitors in the backup segment on which the company operates. But in the work of the company in the import substitution market, there are still restrictions:

• customers "need everything at once": the company switched to a "supermobilization" mode, doubled the staff of specialists, plans for next year - to double again;
• even for the best, most mature software, you need an ecosystem: the company already has more than a thousand partners selling the product;
• the need to constantly work, talk with employees, bring high-quality information to them.

What we lack is statistics, - complained Elena Bocherova. - The market picture is still murky - there are no statistics, analysts, but I would like to rely on solid facts. What really is the dynamics of import substitution in the state segment, the corporate segment? We know that digital transformation maps have been collected in state-owned companies, this analytics exists somewhere - perhaps not collected, not generalized. So you need to do it, roll it out to the market. Validated statistics are very lacking. The country lives in a situation center mode . And the more information we share with each other, the more accurately we will give the market a roadmap for development.

SPIRITA Chairman of the Board Sviridenko stated that cooperation in the American market has become impossible, a turn to the markets of friendly countries is required, and these are completely different markets in terms of maturity and speed of business deployment.

In Russia, companies in first place in terms of the number of paid implementations VideoMost from 2014 to 2022 (TAdviser data). The product can be embedded in any IT landscape, but many companies continue to use Teams despite all the events.

Andrei Sviridenko also noted that the requirements for VKS inside and on the international market began to differ, and the basis of implementation when replacing Microsoft Teams is product integration. Spirit has more than a thousand distribution partners, he stressed.

As for the export prospects, Andrei Sviridenko noted that the company continues to work in Japan and Switzerland. For more than 5 years, work has been going on with Vietnam, India, the Middle East, but the difference in ecosystems makes itself felt, and the main criterion for choosing there is the price-quality ratio.

In March, the demand for VideoMost grew 10 times, - said Andrey Sviridenko. - Large customers began to come, ask the price, test the product. Large companies announced contests for VKS, but canceled them in two days because Microsoft extended its licenses. Psychology has not changed. The question is: what else needs to happen, except for SVO, for psychology to change?

Andrei Shastin, director of strategic initiatives and partnerships at Auriga, a company that has been engaged in custom development for more than 30 years, shared market observations over the past six months.

The hasty departure of Western software companies from the Russian market forces them to develop their own software, he noted, and service companies such as Auriga can become assistants in this. The speaker noted that things are fine with application software in terms of ensuring import independence, with system support, despite Astra Linux, Basalt and other players, it is not clear how to replace a number of software components, and in the development tools of interfaces, the backend is completely uncertain with replacement.

In addition, Andrei Shastin drew attention to a small number of IT companies, where there are more than 500 people on staff, which carries the risks of scaling the product, and the lack of sustainable ecosystems. In the West, he noted, ecosystems are formed around large market players - AMD, Intel, which allows players, the industry to gradually develop. Recipes for the market are seen as follows:

• in the short term, it is necessary to look for companies with expertise of product owners - service companies;
• in medium-term suppliers it is necessary to form consortia, here we need the help of the state.

We have many good programmers with contractors and few qualified product owners, "said Andrei Shastin. - Product owner is a visionary who knows models, product development standards, why they need to be followed. You need to be able to collect requirements, make a prototype, show customers, investors, develop, implement and support. Now there is no other way for industrial companies - they need to grow specialists who understand product development methodologies.

Lev Matveev, chairman of the board of directors, "SearchInform," stated that the catching up always loses, so you can't just catch up with Western systems - you need to make qualitatively better products, and this is better than import substitution.

In the markets of friendly countries, there is interest in Russian IT products, but not in import substitutes, but in the best. These markets must be promoted by the government. It is necessary to form a brand like the beliefs that consumers have that the car is good German or Japanese, and the software is Russian.

As for the "digital attaché," the idea is wonderful, but there are doubts that they will sell well if they motivate their work 1-2% of the contracts sold. Attaches should be for vendors, and not for the ministry, so that earning for themselves, they brought money for Russia.

There is no school of information security specialists in the Middle East, - stated Lev Matveev. - We need help from the state on the implementation of information security, namely - we need information security outsourcing centers, mass training in the basics of information security - and there will already be a platform that is easier to sell than a separate product

Sergey Rezontov, CEO IBS of IfiniSoft, recalled that the volume of Russian IT exports is about $10 billion per year, of which 50% falls on products, and 50% - on services, growth - 10-15% annually. The volume of this market is comparable to the export of grain or wood, he stated, and the measures to support the export of wood and grain are more significant. He also noted that it is extremely important to show customers that even in difficult times, the company retains specialists and helps customers.

The export goals are to attract technologies to the domestic market, as well as to promote the interests of the state in foreign markets. Thanks to the trade missions for meeting with local companies, industry representatives . But I would like the state to give more knowledge about the markets of ASEAN countries, to organize effective interdepartmental interaction. Public investment is needed for export development. These are risky investments, but they will pay off, "said Sergei Rezontov.

Development Director of TrueConfDmitry Odintsov, a Russian developer in the field of corporate video communication, stated that "import substitution for love" is possible only for those products that are exported. And this, according to him, is much better than import substitution "from under the stick." People should want to buy an IT product, not buy it, because this obliges Russian legislation.

In the regions of Latin America, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, we have active business growth - by 50% and an "avalanche" growth in product requests. The latter is due to the fact that the service is located inside the customer's infrastructure, and not somewhere outside, which can be turned off with one button, - said Dmitry Odintsov.

Andrei Gulidin, Deputy General Director, Director of the Business Development Department of the Innotech Group, noted that it would not be possible to get away from the import substitution agenda, so the company sees its mission in helping domestic business in digitalization. At the same time, Innoteh Group is trying to establish relations with Western partners, in the CIS countries, in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa.

The countries of Southeast Asia are lagging behind in the development of broadband and the Internet, - stated Andrei Gudilin. - We can export to them the same services that are already working for us, but we will need the help of the state - additional financing, co-financing the promotion of our products on the international market. The most interesting direction now is Uzbekistan. There is a steady growth of GDP, and actively develops, the quality and coverage of Internet penetration in the country. The level of trust in fintech in this country as nowhere else in this region is high.

Valentin Makarov, president of NP RUSSOFT, summed up the discussion, stating that, although there are many cool programmers in Russia, the situation in import substitution is difficult. And if the state does not act synchronously with the IT industry, import substitution will not work - it is imperative to use the potential of service companies that were among the hundred largest companies. In the export direction, you need to move forward with new products within the framework of the New Technological Order, and it will not be possible to leave without state support, he said. A special Export Support Roadmap is required, which will approve IT exports as one of the top state policy priorities.

It is important to note that earlier more than half of the Russian software market was occupied by foreign companies. The departure of foreign vendors from Russia led to the discovery of new prospects for Russian developers. And the more successful cases, such as VTB's transition to MyOffice, will be realized, the more chances the Russian IT industry has to become a world locomotive.