Interview of TAdviser with the commercial director of the company "Aplana. Development center" Yaroslav Makarov

Yaroslav Makarov: One case legislatively to approve use of the Russian software, and absolutely another – to realize it. And the excess proof to that is recent trial in Chelyabinsk on the fact that the application for participation in the tender of program development of one Russian software developer which was absent in the known register was not accepted by officials. In general on situations in the market, the whole class of the western proprietary solutions it is possible to replace easily as there are corresponding domestic analogs or products based on Open Source. Or costs for development of a custom system are comparable with implementation of a finished drawing product of the western vendors. On the other hand, technology monsters for whom there are no domestic analogs – for example, of class CAD are presented at the Russian market. Thus, a situation in the market in respect of import substitution heterogeneous.

Yaroslav Makarov: It is more connected with an insufficient maturity and small volumes of segments of the Russian IT market in comparison with western. Yes, we have couple of the companies which are successful in the world market (ABBYY, Kaspersky Lab), but these are the vendors which in time occupied narrow niches. And here the Russian IT solutions in the field of a business intelligence, comparable with Oracle BI or MicroStrategy BI, just are absent. Was "Forecast", entering at one time Gartner's quadrant and though at present Forecast has a difficult situation, we turned on Prognoz Platform in the portfolio. Also in the field of a business intelligence we cooperate with the Russian developer Loginom Company (before BaseGroup Labs Analytical technologies). Until the end of this year the company is going to release the new version of the platform Deductor in which we trust and are ready to use.

Yaroslav Makarov: It is possible and is necessary to substitute the western proprietary business applications solving the various business challenges of the enterprise or organization supporting them processes. It is not obligatory to cover all enterprise with the complete solution of the class ERP. But it is possible to solve such specialized problems as automation of transport, logistics, inventory accounting, document flow, contractor interaction and clients, it is necessary, and we do it.

Yaroslav Makarov: The state customers just have no choice. They actively participate in import substitution, and basic reasons of it lie in the field of sanctions policy. As for commercial customers, they consider options of substitution of the western systems proceeding from economy reasons as ruble exchange rate strongly fell, and respectively, the cost of the western software and its support considerably grew.

Yaroslav Makarov: Such statistics is unknown to me. We assess a situation only from practice of our company. Also we see that the Russian customers even more often consider or implementing solutions based on Open Source, or custom development on the western system software, without runtime royalty fees (for example – on .NET or java), or solutions of domestic proprietary vendors.

Yaroslav Makarov: Options are possible the following. The first – delivery of the ready-made solution developed on Open Source or on the proprietary platform, but without runtime royalty fees from the customer. It can be both our ready-made solution, and the companies – our partner. The second option - we provide to the customer not the ready-made solution, but service in development of special software which would meet its requirements. And the third option – we develop and we provide to the customer the platform on which the customer can independently develop and accompany the solution.

Yaroslav Makarov: The option of Open Source has advantages over any proprietary development that it is developed by huge community of programmers and respectively, the intellectual potential is much higher. At the expense of what the 1C company won the Russian market in due time? At the expense of the system of the franchisee within which the partner companies of 1C developed solutions by forces of own programmers. As a result, for example, "The accountant's turbo" on hand had, figuratively speaking, 200 programmers while 1C has tens of thousands. In our practice there is an example of involvement of community of free programmers too. We developed a system of accounting of working time, laid out it on the portal, and now community it finishes. As a result from us it is not required to put the resources at the level of thousands of programmers – we just have no such opportunities. The second advantage of solutions based on Open Source is the open code guaranteeing big information security, in particular - verifiability on lack of special tabs. The western proprietary vendors completely never open a core of the systems though occasionally and declare it. The third advantage – low price in view of lack of license payments.

Yaroslav Makarov: Yes, Open Source solutions are used also on a free basis, and with a paid subscription to a support and maintenance, and quite high at the price in some cases. A well-known example of paid support – the solution on the open Red Hat platform. Let's follow other example: the solution of our partner is Pentaho BI. Today we have only one client paying a subscription for this by Open Source system – Russian Post, all others work for free on the solution, independently develop and support him.

Yaroslav Makarov: It is necessary to separate infrastructure software and business applications. Operating systems, application servers, integration platforms are actively used by the Russian customers. Business applications are distributed to Open Source to a lesser extent, Customers are afraid to transfer critical business applications to products with the open code.

Among commercial structures, especially – a segment of SMB, for tasks, not so critical for business, are rather popular Open Source products with the free scheme of maintenance. For difficult critical applications it is necessary to pay a subscription from the developer. Among state structures, even considering a political component, Open Source system in comparison with other options of import substitution enjoy smaller popularity. Custom developments are more widespread in a state segment, and not so important on what platform they are made – Open Source or proprietary.

Yaroslav Makarov: We specialize, first of all, in accomplishment of custom projects on the Red Hat JBoss Middleware platform. We develop and accompany systems using Java, they function on the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform application server, we implement integration solutions based on JBoss Fuse and A-MQ, we automate business processes using JBoss BPM Suite, and we perform monitoring of the implemented systems using JBoss Operations Network. In our portfolio there is a solution based on portal Liferay Portal Open Source platform on which the big project of the Highest certifying commission distributed through the whole country is implemented. It is, by the way, a good example of use of the free software in state bodies. And we certified in FSTEC on a class of security of personal data the Liferay Portal Community Edition platform, but not our solution. The Pentaho BI platform which is already mentioned by me used by many Russian customers including Russian Post. One more platform - Alfresco which we use regarding development of business applications in the field of workflow automation and different business processes. It is perspective in our opinion and Bonita BPM Open Source platform based on which solution is also available in our portfolio.

Yaroslav Makarov: Argue on this subject generally is how to try to calculate average temperature on hospital. Each specific project needs to be considered separately, executing the corresponding economic calculations. At the same time, according to our estimates, implementation of custom development – is unimportant on Open Source, based on the western proprietary platform, – does without runtime royalty fees the customer or is cheaper, or at the price comparable to the cost of annual support of the solution of large western vendor. As we know, any western proprietary software requires an annual subscription to updating of technical support. And sometimes for only one cost of annual support of products of such global vendors as SAP or Oracle we are ready to perform transition to custom development. It not always so, but even if the cost of transition to custom domestic development will appear higher than the cost of annual support, the payback of such transition is, as a rule, very high. Taking into account a current rate of ruble it is obvious. For example, Microsoft since new year will raise the price of the Dynamics platform.

Yaroslav Makarov: First, it is the Knowledge management system. Knowledge management, explicit and implicit, would like to emphasize, - a hot topic not only in Russia, but also around the world. We offer not only an information system, but also knowledge management methodology in the company in terms of creation of internal processes, regulations, motivations, employee involvement in knowledge management, including crowdsourcing as one of system components. I will emphasize that without implementation of methodology of knowledge management use of the most information system is senseless. This custom solution is created in two options – on Microsoft SharePoint and on the open platform. A system is already implemented and works in the companies "Transneft", "Greenatom" (SharePoint option), in some other the companies. The second custom system about which I would like to tell and on which we started an implementation project recently is the Corporate management system which is also implemented on portal platforms in two options (SharePoint and Alfresco). The state corporations in Russia, as we know, are obliged to disclose today information on a management structure, capital stock, financial statements, - and the Corporate management system helps to solve this range of tasks. Our third custom development on which there are no runtime royalty fees, - the System of investment planning implemented on .Net technology and focused on the large distributed organizations. This development can be considered an analog of such solutions as Oracle Hyperion or SAP BPC, its appointment – project planning, collecting of costs, the multistage approval of the estimate and so on. The fourth system which I want to mention, - the System of service of the chief auditor executed on Java technology and focused on accomplishment of tasks of internal audit of the large company. A system is implemented by us recently century Bank of Russia. And the fifth custom solution - Task management system and projects. There is still a number of solutions, but the volume of an interview does not allow to list their everything.

Yaroslav Makarov: For our company import substitution, as well as a new economic situation in general, is a chance, a possibility of growth of business. And as in the Russian market, and even on foreign – we became cheaper than most of foreign developers. As for perspectives of business development of the company, we assume to move towards drawing products, gradually avoiding development of exclusively custom systems. We select three directions of business: development of the custom systems only under the specific customer, creation of the platform on the basis of which it is possible to do custom solutions for different customers, and creation of ready-made drawing solutions. All listed above custom systems are knowledge managements, corporate management, investment planning, internal audit and project management – we are going to make in the long term drawing products. I will note in conclusion that in the context of import substitution not only the sanctions factor, but also question economy works already: the Russian solutions are often cheaper and more effective in respect of automation of business of the customer.