Main problems and obstacles of import substitution of IT in Russia

2021: Current IT Import Substitution Issues

In the spring of 2021, TAdviser spoke with domestic IT experts and learned their opinion on the most pressing problems of import substitution of software products and iron. Despite all the current difficulties, most respondents to the publication are confident that for several years, with the proper level of attention from the state, the bulk of such difficulties can be solved.

Lack of full Russian analogues of foreign IT solutions

One of the most frequently mentioned problems of software import substitution is the absence of full-fledged domestic analogues for some foreign solutions. Despite the fact that the register of Russian programs already contains over 10 thousand products, there are still niches in which Russian developments cannot yet completely replace the decisions of international companies.

But this is a matter of time and volume of investment from the state and interested market players. Co-investment can significantly accelerate the emergence of new products ready to replace foreign counterparts, "said Alexander Semenov, chairman of the board of directors of Korus Consulting Group of Companies.

According to Yevgeny Sudarkin, General Director of Prof-IT Group, for example, the issue of having a Russian MES system for the operational management of modern production at systemically forming industrial enterprises remains relevant.

Alexander Donin, head of import substitution at software IT company CROC"," calls Microsoft the most striking example of such a problem. Active Directory According to him, organizations with an extensive branch network and increased requirements for stability and scalability cannot afford to use free Russian analogues.

Alexander Gladkov, head of the department for working with large corporate customers at Macroscop, connects this problem with the reluctance of many state corporations to switch to domestic IT products.

In business, the legal address of the software manufacturer is secondary: the effectiveness of tools, the cost of their maintenance, technical support, the ability to scale, the ease of setting up and working with the system come to the fore, "he explains.

Anastasia Grigoryeva, director of the project practice department 1C , T1 Consulting"" adds that in terms of industry IT products, Western vendors offer convenient box solutions for each industry, while Russian ones still sell a designer that is suitable for everyone and no one.

In this regard, automation projects, in fact, turn into projects with a large share of development, and this in turn requires serious budgets and qualifications. This is not always the case for a team of IT professionals, primarily because of lack of experience, to design an information system that will require minimal support, upgrade, and scalability in the future.

It is difficult and costly to be a pioneer: industry IT projects are expensive before going into circulation, it stops a business that wants to switch to domestic solutions. I do not think that this problem will be resolved in the next year or two. The ideal situation is seen in which companies introducing foreign software would retrain to their domestic counterparts and shift the principles of functionality, usability, and interface to Russian software products known to them. When a business begins to think about business tasks, and not the settings that are in its IT system, automation and import substitution should go seven-mile steps, Anastasia Grigoryeva is sure.

Difficulties in replacing foreign corporate software ecosystems

The development of integrated architectures and solutions to replace enterprise software ecosystems that have evolved over the years remains a pressing challenge. For example, a high level of fragmentation of solutions is characteristic of Russian virtualization solutions.

Successful migration from virtualization platforms from VMware, Citrix, Microsoft requires the use of products from 5-7 different manufacturers of Russian software, which slows down and complicates the transition, requires additional refinement of components and often makes it impossible to subsequently easily maintain and update components of the created infrastructure, "says Ivan Klimov, head of development at HOSTVM.

According to him, specialized platform products aimed at demanding customers are developing to solve this problem. Solutions such as the "HOSTVM Virtualization Platform" provide the ability to build a comprehensive infrastructure that includes virtualization not only of servers, but also of desktops, applications, network, storage, building a private cloud, managing a container environment.

At the same time, the platform is developed and accompanied by one developer by analogy with such complex products as VMware vSphere and vCloud, "comments Ivan Klimov.

Compatibility Issues

An important factor is the backward compatibility of domestic IT products with foreign technologies. Even after many years of existence of the concept of import substitution, foreign products and technologies still occupy the vast majority of the Russian market. This should be considered, especially when it comes to system software - therefore, in the domestic database or OS, it is necessary to take into account backward compatibility with the most common application solutions on the market, Lev Matveev is sure.

In the meantime, according to him, this concept works the other way around (when hundreds of applied solutions are forced to adapt to one system).

For example, domestic databases would be much more successful if products developed for foreign MS SQL and Oracle could interact with them without any improvement. Now the standard of interaction with the database, for example, MS SQL and PostgreSQL is different, but this problem is transferred to hundreds and thousands of application service developers, instead of being solved once by the DBMS developer himself, "said the chairman of the board of directors of SörchInform.

Also, instead of developing functionality and competing with Western counterparts, software vendors are forced to spend the lion's share of resources to support many "domestic OS."

According to Lev Matveev, chairman of the board of directors of SearchInform, unified standards created in close cooperation with vendors and the state would solve several problems at once. Firstly, to unify domestic OS, allowing application developers to initially adapt them to system platforms. Secondly, they will make the developers "roadmaps more predictable. And finally, it is these standards that will be the identifier of the Russian OS, its unique distinguishing qualities from foreign ones.

Now, the work on transferring corporate systems and business applications to domestic OS is measured not in months, but in five-year plans, notes Pavel Shcherbinin, head of special ASCON projects. Here you need both financial resources, and personnel, and time for the research stage.

ASCON only R&D for the transition to Linux took a year and a half, and the roadmap for the transition is designed for 5 years. In addition to directly transferring IT systems to another platform, it is necessary to ensure comparable performance of software products in a combination of imported non-volatile software and hardware, the expert explains.

Konstantin Lyanguzov, head of Directum implementation department in state authorities, believes that focusing on the development of leading domestic operating systems could accelerate the import substitution process.

This would save developers from excessive financial investments and unnecessary work related to the need to maintain compatibility and test their products based on a huge variety of Russian and freely distributed OS, "he says.

Lack of funding

The problem of financing projects for the transition to domestic solutions remains urgent. Despite the fact that replacing Russian software in many cases brings economic benefits and a decrease in TCO, it can be very costly and pose threats to the continuity of IT systems.

Here, the key solution is the search for new forms of financing and minimizing risks, "said Yevgeny Sudarkin.

Vladimir Kohan, commercial director of Digital Design, adds that representatives of development companies have long been ready for import substitution in customer organizations. Such projects are constrained by insufficient budgets or responsible persons who do not want to carry out such modernization.

Perhaps personal KPIs for the import substitution of responsible employees, as well as a more active state policy to stimulate import substitution projects, could accelerate the pace of import substitution, "says the expert" Digital Design. "

Vitaly Bogdanov, director of business development at Baikal Electronics, believes that it is necessary to launch a comprehensive program for issuing subsidies to customers for import substitution. Such an approach, in his opinion, will be able to help companies in their doubts, including solving the problem of the higher cost of Russian solutions at the start.

In addition, it is necessary to transfer all GIS and government agencies to Russian electronics and Russian software. Technically, this is already quite real. Together, this is 10-15% of jobs throughout the country. If this idea is implemented in a couple of years, we will get a really working ecosystem built around completely Russian IT solutions, with already experienced "childhood diseases," the expert believes.

Deficiencies in education and science

Vyacheslav Volodkovich, General Director of Aerodisk, connects the problems of import substitution, in particular, with the shortage of IT education and specialized digital competencies.

For example, schools and universities are not yet ready to actively cooperate with Russian manufacturers and radically change educational programs, he notes.

Sergey Kondakov, director of software development technologies at Force Center for Development (Force Group of Companies), adds that, unfortunately, education and science are not yet included in the priorities of our state. Therefore, high-tech imports, based on the achievements of modern science, created by highly skilled personnel and at the same time provided with huge (inaccessible to Russian capital) and long-term investments of both large and small private businesses of the largest economies in the world, will be necessary for a long time.

It is necessary to be very critical of the definition of areas where import substitution is vital. And in other areas, you need to learn how to effectively integrate into the global economy with the maximum benefit for the Russian end user. And focus on those areas where we could make real competition in the short term, "said Sergey Kondakov.

Customer conservatism

Vladimir Burgov, commercial director of CommuniGate Systems, believes that the main obstacle to import substitution is the conservatism of the owners of IT infrastructures - departments and corporations.

Traditionally, many do not dare to update their IT systems and switch to new software for this reason. However, the cost of owning mature Russian software products is significantly lower than Western counterparts. For example, owning CommuniGate Pro is 2-4 times cheaper than Microsoft Exchange Server, with at least comparable, and for some points higher performance. Not the least role is played by the economic factor. Therefore, one of the tools that can accelerate the transition to domestic software may be a state policy to subsidize investments in software renewal, "says Vladimir Burgov.

Lack of modern elemental base production

One of the key problems of import substitution in Russia is the lack of its own modern production of an element base for creating IT equipment.

According to Konstantin Renziaev, CEO of CorpSoft24, until we grow our own competitive manufacturers of electronics and processors, all actions on import substitution will be half-hearted and it will not be possible to talk about any independence.

Sergey Kondakov, Director of Software Development Technologies at Force Center for Development (Force Group of Companies), adds that in our country there is insufficient business incentive for mass involvement in the production sphere of high technologies.

In fact, the problems and causes are the same as in the case of any high-tech production - for example, the same engineering. Among them are the inefficiency of public administration, the lack of "long money" for business, high inflation, the collapse of real industry, the lack of own high-tech means of production, the reduction of state spending on education with low solvency of the population, as well as the low level of engineering education throughout the country and the practical absence of the current domestic engineering school. The prestige of engineering specialties is still very low now, there is a serious lag in applied and fundamental science in the fields associated with the production of electronics, "explains Sergey Kondakov.

Of the domestic successful examples of import substitution, he cites the Elbrus and Baikal processors, noting that even in these cases the production itself is not localized.

Boris Ivanov, vice president of Ricore, adds that prices for domestic processors remain quite high.

The chicken-egg law works here - there are no large orders - manufacturers cannot provide a competitive price. There are no competitive prices - there are no large orders, "he notes.

Other issues

The problems listed above were most frequently referred to by experts. However, there are still a number of challenges that affect IT import substitution processes.

Konstantin Lyanguzov, head of Directum implementation department in state authorities, says that software products of domestic manufacturers using components of Western manufacturers, until the active promotion of import substitution, had process and integration solutions, the development of which was spent tens and hundreds of thousands of hours of labor. The transfer of products and the entire variety of previously developed solutions to import-substituted technologies is a race over time. You need to have time not only to translate the requested solutions, but also to fulfill new current tasks that the market poses, he says.

Igor Leypi, Director of Government Relations at Softline, identifies three problems. One of the most pressing problems, in his opinion, is the lack of attention to the origin of the IT solution.

It is not uncommon for an unknown company to win a tender, the assembly of equipment from which is carried out at inexpensive production in China, but according to formal criteria, the proposal meets the minimum requirements for procurement, he notes.

The second factor that currently somewhat hinders the process of transition to domestic software is the temporary cancellation of centralized purchases of office and anti-virus software.

In 2020, departments could not buy antivirus and office software outside of centralized procurement. When forming budgets for 2020-2021, the FOIV did not provide for the need to independently purchase these categories of software, and now they will have to quickly resolve this issue. Understanding this, the Ministry of Digital Affairs simultaneously shifted the deadlines for submitting reports on the transition to the preferential use of Russian software, "explains Igor Leypi.

Finally, the pandemic and the need for operational restructuring of the IT infrastructure also significantly diverted attention from the import substitution process. When the question is how quickly to solve the urgent problems facing the organization, the origin of the solutions being implemented is not so important.

It is worth recalling once again that import independence is not an end in itself, but one of the tools for building an efficient and reliable IT infrastructure. And when there is no time for market analysis, both the business and the public sector prefer to use already familiar solutions, "says Softline expert.

Vladimir Andreev, president of DoksVision, recalls the problem with public procurement laws. According to them, the price remains the most important criterion for choosing a product and a supplier.

This prevents competition with Western products, easily going for large discounts, especially in the primary sale. It also prevents competing with fake "domestic" products based on the western ACT. Reservations in the registry law about the need to have sufficient resources in Russia to support the product are quite vague and easy to do, he adds.

Evgeny Odintsov, Executive Director of SIGMA, lists a number of problems:

• The inability to fully replace the entire stack of technologies and IT solutions leads to additional costs for ensuring compatibility between software vendors. In fact, this is the risk of a repeat of the situation of "patchwork automation," in which many enterprises were in the late 1990s.
• Many Russian solutions have been created recently and do not yet have the necessary completeness of functionality
• Lack of established user support practices - especially for newly introduced solutions
• Lack of investment in IT and state support measures, hidden lobbying
• Personnel shortages in the industry leading to resource shortages and "overheated" salaries
• Lack of promising Russian IT start-ups creating innovative products rather than clones of existing solutions

Alexander Gladkov, Head of Major Corporate Clients at Macroscop, believes that high administrative barriers are a factor slowing down the import substitution process.

The lack of uniform standards, confusing algorithms for obtaining the necessary certificates artificially limit the offer: only a narrow circle of integrators and vendors can work with government orders. Therefore, it is often unprofitable for companies that successfully develop in the commercial sector to spend resources on opaque bureaucratic procedures - they prefer to invest in business development in foreign markets. At the same time, Russian customers cannot purchase high-quality software, since it is not properly certified, the expert says.

In addition, experts believe that there should be more decisive steps on the part of the state in the direction of import substitution.

The main problem of import substitution we see in the fact that more decisive measures by the state are required. Despite a number of correct and bold steps already taken in this direction, the opinion of those whose interests are to delay the transition of the state to Russian software and iron is also taken into account. The state is able to convince society that the transition to domestic software is inevitable. It was important to adhere to the policy of suppressing the actions and factors that might delay that process. In this case, in the next 3-4 years, the problem of import substitution can be completely solved, "said Dmitry Grebenshchikov, director of import substitution technologies at Diasoft.

2020

Problems of large and complex import substitution projects

In March-April 2020, TAdviser conducted a survey of Russian experts of IT companies and found out what problems they face when implementing large import substitution projects and what difficulties their customers are experiencing.

Multi-Vendor Software Compatibility

One of the main problems of large import substitution projects is related to ensuring the compatibility of installed domestic software with another used in the organization. It is impossible to replace all imports at the same time with all domestic ones, and there are very few cases when it is possible to replace one product in isolation. Even when replacing a Western antivirus with a domestic one, you have to synchronize it with the existing directory services, systems of becaping, monitoring and alerts on the network. In most cases, things are much more complicated.

Imagine that you boil borsch, and without turning off the stoves, you need to replace all the potatoes in it with turnips, and carrots with pasternak. This comparison really reflects the picture and shows that the main problem is with the cook (IT customer), and not with the farmer - the turnip vendor, "explains Sergey Kuryanov, director of strategic marketing at DoksVision.

Foreign companies developed their products for decades, as many built interaction, conflict-free work of products with each other. For the success of the import substitution program in Russia, the formation of an ecosystem and horizontal connections between domestic vendors is necessary.

Foreign products are now built by the ecosystem around Microsoft solutions, developers of Russian operating systems with variable success are also working in this direction, "says Stanislav Cherkov, head of infrastructure solutions at Krok.

Any large project related to changing information systems is difficult. Including projects in the framework of which domestic software is actively introduced. You have to change the habits of users, the habits of system administrators, perhaps conduct training. If you replace the OS, you need to see what compatible software is.

By initiating such changes, we must expect in advance that this is not a one-time change, but a gradual process that needs to be designed. And we must count on the fact that for a significant time it will be necessary to work in a heterogeneous network, where there are, for example, Linux, and Windows, and it is important that both the domain structure and the means of organizing collective work continue to work. In our Alt distributions, we provide this opportunity, ensuring compatibility with MS AD and with MS Exchange, "says Alexei Smirnov, General Director of Basalt ACT.

According to him, significant difficulties are due to the fact that many state and regional information systems can only serve users working under Windows, which blocks import substitution in workplaces where these GIS are used.

Among the problematic GIS I can name the State Automated System Office, State Automated System Justice, and many others. In general, it is better not so much to engage in "import substitution" as to carry out the planned development of information systems using domestic software, "said the general director of Basalt ACT.

Armen Kocharov, Commercial Director of New Cloud Technologies, believes that the most difficult problems do not arise for large customers, but for customers who have made a deep technological dependence on foreign software - for example, integration solutions that are tightly "stuck on the needle" based on closed proprietary protocols or simply using proprietary data formats or even proprietary macro command languages.

In this case, the task from purely technical - migration to new solutions - often requires business analysis and, possibly, process changes. However, if we talk about office solutions - for example, editors or e-mail - there are no unsolvable problems here, "he notes.

I-Teco believes that in order to effectively replace imported solutions with domestic ones, a completely Russian technological stack of hardware, system and application software is needed. And you need software compatibility with hardware manufacturers.

Sergey Popov, Deputy General Director of I-Teco, says that the difficulty in switching to domestic solutions lies in an inherited infrastructure built on imported products. And large projects sometimes require a large-scale restructuring of the entire IT architecture of the customer.

The difficulty of implementing large-scale projects with the introduction of domestic software is associated with the presence of well-established connections with large Western vendors and supply channels, the convenience for the customer to purchase box solutions with iron and software from Western manufacturers. It is difficult for many large companies to abandon Western software and hardware products, which most of their business processes are tied to, he adds.

According to Alexei Malkov, Quality Director of EOS, in the case of problems of interaction between application systems, with system software, with imported software, which cannot be replaced at the moment, it is possible to create a so-called "heterogeneous environment." That is, in one organization at different workplaces, old imported software and new domestic software are also used.

For example, most jobs running the domestic OS, and the part where operations can be performed only under Windows, is running Windows. This group includes jobs from which most GIS is accessed, he notes.

The state and the Ministry of Communications are pursuing a deliberate policy of transferring domestic consumers to Russian software. The share of domestic solutions used in government agencies began to grow thanks to the efforts of government authorities and development companies that increase the efficiency of their products.

However, many manufacturers of software products act piecemeal, and customers are forced to independently solve a very time-consuming and difficult task - selecting a complex of Russian software that will work in their infrastructure, says Renat Lashin, executive director of ARPP Domestic Software.

Ivan Panchenko, deputy general director of Postgres Professional, adds that the task of import substitution turned out to be more complex than it seemed at first. Simply take out a foreign component and replace it with a Russian one is impossible. And this is not only about technology. Often the product dictates certain business processes and is addictive not only to people, but also to organizations. Deep changes are required at the system level, including a broadening of the outlook for enterprise IT. Import substitution should begin with education, our foreign competitors know this well and use it.

Many manufacturers of domestic software focused on foreign system products that dominated the Russian market - primarily OS and DBMS - and built their own software on their basis. The need to maintain compatibility with each other did not immediately become apparent. In order to solve the problem of disunity of our manufacturers, a committee on the integration of domestic software was created in ARPP, one of the first results of which was the catalogue of compatibility of domestic software[1]including all products from the Register and allowing their manufacturers to post more detailed information about their products and their compatibility with each other and with domestic iron, he notes.

Irreplaceable Solutions

100% import substitution is not yet possible, since there are industries in which there is nothing to replace foreign IT products. According to Sergey Popov, Deputy General Director of I-Teco, the processes of developing new products, testing, passing certification require temporary, personnel and material resources. To create import-substituting products, you need investments and qualified IT specialists and those who will then bring these products to the market.

Nikolai Domukhovsky, Deputy General Director for Scientific and Technical Work of the UCSB, believes that it will take many more years for the appearance of Russian analogues of such "indispensable" foreign IT solutions. However, in his opinion, the process is going in the right direction and the situation today is much better than it was 5 years ago.

Timur Akhmerov, General Director of BARS Group, adds that any software can be created, but the resources spent to achieve product quality will need as much as Western vendors spent on a similar product. There will be no miracles. Therefore, the customer may face a long and expensive development, and the performer - with explanations why it will not be possible to show the result in a short time.

Insufficient functionality of Russian solutions

Experts interviewed by TAdviser say that customers often complain about the insufficient, from their point of view, functionality of Russian IT solutions presented on the market.

The solutions of well-known international vendors are most often already well known and understandable to the customer. Implementing projects based on them does not require additional resources from the system integrator. If we talk about the experience of our company, then offering customers solutions of domestic manufacturers, we conduct piloting, if necessary, we carry out refinements based on the needs of a particular customer, that is, we castomize the proposed solution. Only after this stage is the customer ready to consider and decide on the purchase of domestic products. Thus, we can summarize that working with domestic solutions requires 2 times more effort, "explains Stanislav Iodkovsky, First Deputy General Director of HayTek.

Evgeny Shonov, Head of Local Software Solutions for Accounting Automation at SKB Kontur, adds that existing information systems have been working for many years, are adapted as much as possible to the business processes of customers and have a lot of ready-made functionality. At the same time, new import-substituted solutions, as a rule, are created recently and are limited only by basic functionality, so they do not immediately cover all work scenarios or do not provide the set of amenities that existing ones have. And the requirements for them by customers are the same or even higher.

The director of UserGateDmitry Kurashev believes that the reputation of Russian solutions spoils the fashion to make them on open source.

People take open code, do something on their knees, and then sell it with the words "we have a new generation firewall" or something like that. We have more than 30 of our own operating systems in the registry of Russian software, it does not take much thought to rename Linux. Unfortunately, such a halter attitude to the work does not improve the reputation of Russian developers. Despite the fact that open source solutions are very important for the development of the industry, they have certain boundaries of application, because you do not control the source code. They act as a substrate for the rapid development of modern technologies, but bringing such solutions to the customer is wrong, "he notes.

The same problem is noticed by the chairman of the board of directors of "SearchInform" Lev Matveev.

Five years have passed since the start of import substitution. What have we achieved? The market has many variants of application software created on the basis of open code. And products collected on the basis of foreign software in the domestic "wrapper." But this is not even close import substitution. In such "semi-products" there is minimal intellectual value, and analogues can be taken free of charge. Release such solutions to foreign markets, and you will see that no one needs them.

According to him, this is the main complaint against players and regulators on the field of import substitution. At the same time, in order to move off the ground, it is necessary to honestly evaluate Russian IT solutions, even those that are already included in the register of domestic software. It is necessary to analyze what is inside import-substituting products - unique developments or someone else's solution with a new design and label? To do this, you need to form a group of independent experts and seriously check each candidate to get into the list of domestic import substitution solutions.

Three criteria will help to define "who is who." Firstly, this is the share of intellectual value in the product. Secondly, demand in foreign markets. And thirdly, popularity and fame among end users. We will begin to make truly our IT products, then import substitution will make sense, "Lev Matveev is sure.

Need for deep solution comparison

An important problem in the path of system change is the lack of a clear understanding by the customer of what functions they use in the old system and what functions are required in the new system.

Anton Vaganov, Director of ESM Projects of LANIT, notes that often customers have introduced not standard box solutions, but to a significant extent customized to their needs, and by the time of the transition they do not have employees who represent how and for what multiple improvements were made to the current system.

To solve this problem, it is necessary to carry out painstaking work with the involvement of all functional customers to study the current system or design a solution from scratch, "he says.

Kirill Dyakov, managing partner of Mirapolis, explains that this procedure for deeply comparing current and alternative solutions is not the easiest, it takes a lot of time, as well as the company's readiness to invest a large amount of time and resources in this process without guaranteeing its success. At the same time, on the supplier side, this requires investment at the entrance without guarantees of their payback, since to make such a deep comparison of systems, a sufficiently complex "pilot" must be carried out, which will require significant resources from the two parties.

Often this becomes a deterrent until there is no choice and clear deadlines for transferring to Russian software are set, he says.

Novelty of solutions for users

Another barrier to switching from one software to another is the novelty of the user solution, which can temporarily lead to a decrease in performance. Since reorienting to a new interface, even if it is more convenient and understandable, it will still require addictive users.

This cannot be completely excluded, but it can be leveled to some extent if you choose software developed from the point of view of user experience and/or adapted for client tasks. It is also worth considering options for connecting tip services, which directly in the interface of the new system will help the user navigate faster, "says Kirill Dyakov, managing partner of Mirapolis.

Nikolai Domukhovsky, Deputy General Director for Scientific and Technical Work of the UCSB, adds that users and administrators can be understood: "You have been working with one solution for many years and know it in detail, and here you have to abandon your experience and start training almost from scratch."

Insufficient funding

A serious problem is the lack of a targeted budget for import substitution projects, since, as a rule, enterprises must solve import substitution issues within the current budget for supporting the operation of information systems.

Difficulties with receiving state support are present in the regions. Alexey Malkov, director of quality of the company, EOS explains that the state began to allocate subsidies through various programs. But at the same time, strange provisions appear in the documents, thanks to which it is not always possible to use this money.

For example, in the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of 30.11.2019 No. 1557 on the development of an interdepartmental interaction system, subsidies to the subject of the Russian Federation are provided subject to certain conditions, including "the average salary of one employee, directly related to the performance of interoperability work through the unified version 3 system, cannot exceed the average monthly accrued salary for a type of economic activity in the field of information and communications, calculated on the basis of the data of the territorial body of the Federal State Statistics Service for the subject of the Russian Federation. " In other words, if in the Chechen Republic the average salary in the field of software development is about 20 thousand rubles, then only organizations registered in Chechnya can carry out work. Are there specialists in the field of interagency cooperation in these organizations? The answer is simple: Chechnya will not be able to receive this subsidy, "he says.

Opinion of Russoft

Valentin Makarov, President of the Russoft Association, believes that firstly, there is no Russian manufacturer ready to deliver a complete set of compatible and efficiently working software units to make up the IT system. And secondly, Russian manufacturers do not have the financial resource to finalize their solutions and ensure compatibility and effective interaction between them within the IT system.

In addition, an important point is the lack of state support measures to unite different manufacturers into the Consortium to solve the general task of creating an effective IT system. In addition, Chief information officers of customers will be in constant fear for being accused of violating the current contract with the import supplier due to misuse of budget funds.

Vitaly Balanda, Director of Innovation of Rexoft, coordinator of the import substitution committee of NP Russoft, adds that there are problems both on the customer's side and on the contractor's side. For customers, these are, first of all, project and business risks of implementing alternative software, fear of duplication of costs during the transition and psychological and organizational barriers.

From the point of view of the performers, there are difficulties in simultaneously refining the products in accordance with the wishes of customers, insufficient funding both for the development of the product as a whole and for individual wishes of specific customers. This also imposes the problem of investing in products in the face of blurred demand prospects.

Human resources complexity of customers and performers

Substitution involves the development of a parallel functioning new system and the maintenance of the old one. In this case, explains Dmitry Ivanov, CEO of HandySoft, there is a duplication of resources, since specialists in working with both imported software and specialists in setting up and commissioning new software are required. At the same time, the new software does not always exactly have all the functions of the replaced software, to which they are accustomed.

In addition, when implementing geographically distributed projects and automating enterprises outside the central part of the Russian Federation, there are few or almost no specialists in Linux operating systems and SUBDPostgres Pro to provide advice and solve problems on the ground.

To develop for domestic OS and DBMS, vendors need to retrain personnel. Often this training occurs in the form of self-training, says EOS Alexey Malkov, director of quality.

In this case, the specialist tries to master the new system software using the paradigms of Microsoft, Oracle, which is fundamentally not true. This results in poorly functioning applications. The solution to this problem is very simple: take retraining courses in leading training centers. But often employers do not want to let specialists leave work even for a week, "he adds.

Many customers have already developed their own infrastructure for supporting information systems, there are trained specialists, system administrators. With the advent of new information systems, said Evgeny Shonov, a representative of SKB Kontur, they have to retrain their employees. Because of this, for a long time they cannot provide the same level of support as with classic systems

For customers, import substitution is essentially a replacement for software without changing the functionality. Although in each particular case, as a result of the replacement of the software, the functionality can both increase and not necessarily decrease. In some cases, performance and fault tolerance will change. Moreover, even if these indicators remain within acceptable limits during deterioration, the very fact of a decrease in the indicator psychologically negatively affects staff.

But in any case, the new product will require training and the main addiction of users. Accordingly, it is not clear that neither the user, nor the system administrator, nor the manager wants to change everything that works for. It is the customer's employees who are serious opponents of import substitution, "says Alexei Malkov.

Most are used to the interface and certain functions of foreign solutions, so it's hard for them to perceive the GUI of Russian software, "adds Stanislav Cherkov, head of infrastructure solutions at Krok.

Over the years, customer users have become accustomed to working in MS Office, using programs included in MS Windows.

There are similar programs that are domestic, but users are not used to them. Not one short training. And often when planning for author supervision, they lay very little time. Therefore, users, left without support, resist import substitution, "adds Alexey Malkov.

Scale systems under heavy loads

One of the critical issues with scaling the system under heavy loads. If a large company has already implemented a Western tested solution, then the transition to Russian software is accompanied by risks that the newly introduced solution may not pull similar loads.

This is one of the main risks and difficulties that customers may face when importing. There are a number of activities that at the entrance allow them to be reduced. For example, carrying out load testing, various tests on pilot groups. Nevertheless, you need to look at a similar experience in implementing projects on the chosen solution in other large companies. If there is, then this significantly reduces the risks, says Kirill Dyakov, Managing Partner of Mirapolis.

Sergey Kuryanov, director of strategic marketing at DoksVision, explains that domestic software was previously practically not used in tens of thousands of jobs: developers did not have the opportunity to increase scalability without having pilot sites for optimizing products.

Insufficient state regulation

According to a number of experts, in some segments of the Russian IT market there is not enough state regulation, without which domestic solutions are difficult to deal with foreign competitors.

According to SPIRIT President Andrei Sviridenko, in the segment where the VideoMost operates - video conferences for corporate use - 80% of large purchases (more than $1M) are purchases of software and VKS equipment of large international vendors.

Federal structures and organizations with solid budgets (such as Gazprom, Lukoil, Sberbank, VTB, Magnit, etc.), as Microsoft, Cisco, Polycom, Avaya purchased 20 years ago, continue to do so, adding Huawei. The technical tasks of procurement tenders are written in such a way that it is difficult for domestic vendors to pass due to insufficient product functionality. VideoMost, a 100% Russian VKS developer, is ready to provide customers with 85% of the functionality of the Cisco VKS, but in the customer's TA there will always be such a point that only a foreign monopolist can provide. To compete with world monopolists, whose share in Russia is even greater than in the world, small domestic companies are not able to without state regulation. How does a schoolboy fight with a selection spar? It is necessary to level the conditions of competition, including using the FAS. There is a Russian aerospace station, we are ready to provide free trials, conduct tests and pilots, but there is no political will to bring free pilots to real purchases from large and state-owned companies, "Sviridenko said.

Others

In general, the selection of products and services for the implementation of large IT projects is a complex complex process. Especially when it comes not to creating a project from scratch, but to replacing the existing and used IT architecture. The slightest transition error can lead to significant business consequences.

Because of this, customers are responsible for choosing IT solutions, and the question of the country of origin of the IT solution, if it is not related to legal requirements, does not come first in the decision criteria. But the functionality, the cost of implementation and migration without stopping the business, the issues of support, retraining IT and business team, the total cost of the entire project - truly concerns the customer. In the end, it's a matter of comparing the cost of ownership and the risks of the project - to stay on the current, albeit foreign software, having an implemented solution, a proven internal IT team, once invested investments or get involved in a migration project to domestic counterparts, "says Andrei Pachikin, business development manager at Yandex.Cloud. - Imagine that you need to build a house, instead of the one you live in without leaving it, and you will get the approximate sensations of a Chief information officer who is faced with the need to migrate to new IT solutions.

It is much easier, he said, in the field of infrastructure solutions of cloud providers, where migration from one provider to another can happen much faster and with less risk. For example, in Yandex.Cloud, all the main stages of migration to are fully automated through the Hystax Acura application, which can be launched from the cloud marketplace.

The application allows you to transfer and launch infrastructure in Yandex.Cloud from the platforms of any global cloud providers, VMware and OpenStack virtualization platforms and your own "iron." Such migration occurs without downtime and stopping business processes, and also allows you to carry out guaranteed transfer without losing data, "adds Andrei Pachikin.

According to Elena Bocherova, Executive Director of Akronis Infoprotecta, large projects require a serious audit of the existing IT infrastructure of the organization and not only a thorough selection of software from the registry, but also a detailed study of the transition scenario to this software. When implementing complex import substitution projects, customers often encounter the fact that they have to migrate data from current systems to new ones and the risks of data loss, as well as malfunctioning of already established processes, are quite high. Therefore, before you begin this process, you should take care of the right to error and start the project with the implementation of a reliable backup and recovery system, if this is not already done.

Modern technologies allow you to protect data on a corporate scale and today there are already reliable domestic backup and recovery solutions included in the registry, she notes.

Leonid Tikhomirov, head of ITPS, identifies several main among the problems of performers. This is the lack of long-term contracts, the inability to overcome impatience and distrust of quality on the part of the customer, underestimating the amount of required resources and competencies, as well as revaluing your own forces.

According to Pavel Eiges, CEO of Open Mobile Platform, it must be recognized that for the use of advanced, but still leading to digital dependence, the fruits of the world's largest digital economy will most likely have to pay an economic, technological, and then, possibly, a political price. Therefore, there is really no choice: it is necessary to create, maintain and protect your own basic digital technologies.

You can't be a little sovereign. Either you are sovereign to the full extent of the technological stack, or it makes no sense. It makes no sense if we are talking about digital sovereignty, putting a Russian office or any other application software on Windows or Oracle. It is also pointless to put a Microsoft office package on the Russian operating system. Yes, we now do not have our necessary component base for the creation of fully domestic hardware platforms, but this will have to be done. Otherwise, there will be no digital sovereignty, "he said.

Why are import substitution projects "drowned out"?

Having talked with experts of the domestic IT market, TAdviser learned why customers are often limited only to testing domestic analogues of foreign IT solutions, and it does not come to real projects.

But first we should mention the two poles of customers. According to Armen Kocharov, commercial director of New Cloud Technologies, at one pole there are "applications" testing in the context of satisfying domestic solutions with clearly formulated requirements (both current and potential). From the other pole - "academics," testing in the context of an abstract comparison of various solutions, with a distribution of scores, pros and cons, dynamic weight coefficients and bubble correspondence diagrams.

In the first case, customers move significantly more often and much faster from testing to practical use or, at a minimum, to a list of critical requirements. And more and more of them. There are also quite a few customers of the second type - and here really the conversion of tests to projects is quite low. However, such work, despite a fair academism, is also useful to both developers and customers: the first gives valuable information, and the second "cleans the chakras" of import substitution, consistently moving from the pole of academic knowledge to the pole of applied knowledge, "says Armen Kocharov.

Formal testing

Testing allows the company to analyze the market for the presence of software comparable to the software they have introduced, in the event that a decision is made to switch to domestic software. But, as Anton Vaganov, Director of ESM Projects of LANIT notes, in most cases comparability testing is carried out without a real understanding of that, what functionality is used in which departments and whether all software functions are involved, and at the same time, it is decided that certain Russian programs are not currently applicable due to the lack of any opportunities in them that may never be useful to this company.

A striking example is office packages. At the beginning of communication, almost everyone believes that without the functionality of macros and PivotTables, as in Excel, their employees will not be able to work, and during real testing it turns out, that this functionality is demanded by no more than 5% of employees of the organization, and they need a table editor only to upload information from information systems and prepare table forms using the simplest formulas, "says Anton Vaganov, director of ESM projects at LANIT.

Roman Mylitsyn, Director of Innovation, Astra Linux Group of Companies, adds that testing is often carried out only in order to have a formal justification for the impossibility of using domestic software. Therefore, the problem often lies not in failed testing, but in the initial refusal of the customer to switch to other technologies due to the cost and complexity of implementing the process itself, which is associated with various kinds of external and internal difficulties.

Lack of functionality

The absence of a transition from testing to real implementation can be when, testing analogues, the customer understands that the solution is not functional enough, or the system is not as it is used to, or as required by the client's business process.

During the initial implementation phase, the company usually makes some minor changes to its processes, if required when implementing an automated system. But with the subsequent forced transition to another solution, the latter is required to fully comply in all aspects with the current solution. And even if you can finalize the software under consideration, then the issue of financing and risks for both parties arises, which stops from further steps, "explains Kirill Dyakov, managing partner of Mirapolis.

Dmitry Ivanov, CEO of HandySoft, adds that domestic software began to be developed much later and does not have such resource capabilities as imported. Faced with a lack of functionality, potential customers refuse to implement Russian software. For customers, there is a risk that the domestic manufacturer will lose interest in its product and the customer will thus remain one-on-one with implementation, without the possibility of development and maintenance of operability.

According to Leonid Tikhomirov, head of ITPS, very often the expectations of customers from the capabilities of Russian software, formed on the basis of experience with the best world solutions, are redundant in relation to real needs and are based on conservative ideas.

For example, a foreign analogue of 100 + reporting forms, and almost all 20-30 is used in the work. It seems why you need all 100? But expectations have already been formed about the number of possible forms, and when they are offered less in the solution, the customer feels uncomfortable and tries to choose solutions completely similar to the one used, "explains the head of ITPS.

According to Mikhail Gusev, Deputy General Director of BOSS. Personnel systems, "we were all instilled for more than 25 years the idea that Western solutions are the best. As a result, successful companies built an IT infrastructure on such software, regardless of the considerable costs of its creation and maintenance.

The transition to something else requires not only psychological restructuring, but, most importantly, confidence in the reliability and functionality of domestic analogues. And replacing imported software in operating systems in a short time and without additional financial costs is simply impossible. Another important aspect is the timing of the transition. Often, Western solutions have been honed for years to the specifics of the customer's business processes and quick replacement from to domestic analogues may not happen. And here the first step in the implementation of the import substitution strategy could be the replacement of HRM blocks of such systems, "said Mikhail Gusev.

High cost of real substitution

It is often economically impractical to switch to domestic solutions, they need to be finalized. According to Timur Akhmerov, General Director of BARS Group, if the customer is a commercial structure that considers its profit, he will think three times about the need for costs to create a quality analogue and wait for other companies to finance the development of domestic software.

To switch to Russian software, adds the commercial director of Digital Design, Vladimir Kohan, often needs a comprehensive plan for phased replacement of IT products with preliminary compatibility testing, including checking the rarest (but important) scenarios. These activities may require improvements to the new software to ensure better compatibility. And this, in turn, is already associated with both financial expenses and temporary delays.

According to Valentin Makarov, President of the Russoft Association, the price of real replacement can be extremely high, since it will include current license payments for imported software in accordance with the current contract, payments for Russian software and payment for services to adjust the compatibility of the new software and the existing IT system.

Complexity of the project

Organizations want to solve business problems, save money, optimize software costs. Among the reasons for refusing to replace foreign with domestic software may be the fear that this is an unpredictably complex process and that "domestic a priori is worse."

The state forces import substitution, and customers do not want. They conduct a pilot and understand that the project will be really difficult. They do not see advantages for themselves. But the pilot allows you to report on the work done and collect a texture to explain why everyone needs import substitution, but it is impossible in their specific organization, "says Alexei Malkov, director of quality at EOS.

When the tasks were solved for a long time on foreign software, the process is built, the employees are trained and "everything works" - significant arguments are needed to begin automation or digitalization again. Therefore, Russian software, in particular, for data analysis, is more often used to solve new business problems, "explains Yulia Kudryavtseva, director of strategic development at Forsyth.

The stereotype of the complex process of introducing Russian software, in her opinion, is leveled according to the results of the completion of the first wave of import substitution. In recent years, cases of the introduction of projects of different scale with the participation of Russian software have appeared on the market. On the basis of Forsyth products, for example, solutions are being introduced and tested in Transneft, FGC UES, Gazprom Neft, Zarubezhneft, EVRAZ, Lenta, Agency 2, as well as in regional and federal executive bodies.

There will be more implementations - there will be more trust in Russian products. I think widespread coverage of the experience of introducing Russian software in state-owned companies (there are bright cases on the market) will be useful and important to overcome skepticism about domestic software, "said Yulia Kudryavtseva.

According to her, the domestic IT market has long demonstrated a high level of its development: many Russian products are used by foreign customers, in some industries such solutions occupy a significant share of the world arena.

As for our products, the platform of the company "Forecast," on the basis of which we developed "Forsyth. The analytical platform, "having significantly expanded and modified it, was part of the Magic Quadrant of the Gartner analytical agency for several years in a row," recalls Yulia Kudryavtseva. - We, Forsyth company - are open for pilot projects based on our software, we are ready to demonstrate to the market that there is a high-quality alternative to foreign software.

Import substitution, often turns out to be the incentive that allows you to revise and modernize your infrastructure and use Russian solutions, many of which are not inferior to foreign counterparts, adds Elena Bocherova, executive director of Akronis Infoprotita.

"Works - don't touch"

Chief information officers find it difficult to overcome the habit of working with proven suppliers, with proprietary licenses from foreign companies. As Anton Vaganov, director of ESM projects at LANIT, notes, the favorite saying of system administrators: "Work - don't touch." And any software change is always an effort not only to integrate a new product into the IT landscape, but also to overcome user discontent, justify economic feasibility and avoid the risks of company downtime.

Market participants notice a certain skepticism that is observed among customers to domestic analogues of foreign IT solutions, their application on an industrial scale and at critical nodes. This is mainly due to the fact that here their entire area of ​ ​ responsibility - the decision that falls into production, always entails a critical requirement for the service.

Therefore, it is easier for customers not to take risks by experimenting with new developments, but to choose a reliable and proven solution from an international vendor for years or even decades. I will not hide the fact that sometimes questions arise to our domestic development companies, including, for example, the percentage of warranty requests (RMA) - Russian vendors do not have it significantly, but still higher than foreign ones, "said Stanislav Iodkovsky, First Deputy General Director of HayTek

Elena Bocherova, Executive Director of Akronis Infoprotecta, adds that most systems have been built and expanded for years and organizations always have a high dependence on already established processes, both internal and external interaction, for example, with the same GIS or with their own insights.

The process of training users and IT specialists in new systems is also important, it requires significant resources and time, because the main principle of any activity is not to break what works well, "she says.

Need for batch solutions and a clear replacement plan

Director of Innovation of Rexoft, Coordinator of the Import Substitution Committee of NP Russoft Vitaly Balanda, believes that for the transition, the projects will go further than the "pilots" together with creation of compatible industry package solutions based on domestic software with clear implementation logic and further support.

Customers should have a clear plan to transition to domestic software, covering all aspects of concern. Such an approach may interest Russian large corporate customers and will make it possible to get a qualitative break from attempts to pointwise introduce Russian software. Undoubtedly, such work is possible only when the efforts of software market participants and vertical industry expertise are combined, he believes.

Lack of experience of domestic IT companies at Enterprise level

The customer often only tests domestic analogues, because domestic products are interesting, promising, knowledge-intensive, but not mature enough. In addition, Russian vendors often do not know how to work at the Enterprise level, do not know how to beautifully submit their developments, offer alternatives and conduct a clearly structured dialogue. Working with the needs of customers is not built effectively enough, said Sergey Kuznetsov, CEO of Unidata.

Our foreign colleagues, at the same time, are also not ideal: abroad, first of all, the traditional ones were invested not in knowledge-intensive, but in marketing and promotion. In domestic realities, this does not work - our buyers immediately look at the root, ask questions on the merits, "he notes.

Another "Achilles heel" of domestic decisions, according to Sergey Kuznetsov, is associated with the lack of a confirmed and powerful expert component with the support of the community of professionals.

{{quote | Taking all of the above into account, Unidata recently published the core of its open-license data management platform. This solution is part of the company's strategy and mission to form a community of specialists in the field of data management and is aimed at the development of the industry as a whole. The core of the platform is designed to create information systems that have at their core the concept of master data, and require taking into account the specifics of certain industries. The core supports the ideology of weakly connected "modules," which allows to minimize the impact of the specifics of specific conditions on the entire system. In addition to laying out the source code, we have also begun to form the Community, because only participation in the project of a powerful pool of data management specialists from around the world will bring truly effective results, "says the CEO of Unidata.

2019

Why is IT import substitution painful, long and expensive?

During the preparation of the review "Import Substitution of Information Technologies in Russia," TAdviser analysts received answers from 35 experts. Most of them, although they agree with the thesis that import substitution is underway, at the same time they note the complexity and slowness of this process. Among the respondents' answers regarding import substitution, such epithets as "heavy," "slow," "difficult," "painful," "not breakthrough," "sluggish," "expensive" and "slow."

According to most experts, it is premature to talk about the mass replacement of foreign software, that is, replacing existing and functioning IT systems with Russian ones. Despite optimistic expectations of past years, the past 2018 did not become a turning point for IT import substitution, and numerous large transactions to replace imported software with Russian were not noticed.

In absolute numbers, the process of import substitution does not look breakthrough. It goes slowly, painfully and with low efficiency. The prospect of changing the usual foreign decisions to Russian analogues still does not please many. In addition, in practice, it turns out that foreign IT products in some industries still have nothing to replace.

Reasons for the slowness of import substitution

Back in July 2016, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved a plan for the transition of federal executive bodies (FOIV) to domestic office software. According to the plan, by the end of 2018, FOIVs were already supposed to switch to domestic software products, and for the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, local governments, state-owned companies and corporations it was necessary to prepare methodological recommendations with a planned deadline for solving the problem in 2020.

2018 has passed, 2020 is not far off, but today (April 2019) it is obvious that the planned dates for the transition of the FOIV and the development of a replacement methodology were too optimistic.

Konstantin Languzov, head of Directum implementation department in state authorities, notes that the task is being solved, but not in a hurry, carefully, and not as easily as we would like. He explains this for a number of reasons, in particular:

• The criteria for determining "Domestic Software" continue to change: the last supplement to Order No. 722 was issued in the second half of December 2018, and the composition of the requirements in it differs from the list presented in the previous supplement. As a result, the final picture with final and exact requirements does not add up.
• Insufficient funding for replacement in the planned time frame. Domestic software needs to be purchased, and in the conditions of changing criteria, purchased domestic software may fall out of the register, respectively, you will have to buy again. Such decisions raise questions from the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation.
• Products from the register of domestic software, contrary to the promises of vendors, often do not provide high requirements for the performance of industrial systems, and sometimes at all for operability. It is impossible to solve the problems of such a transition without the support of the vendor, and this again costs money.

All three reasons, in his opinion, are interconnected. Methodological recommendations are not specified, as there is no confidence in the fundamental possibility of full-fledged universal substitution. Those responsible for defining the criteria try to perform the initial task without disrupting the operability of information systems. Vendors strive to achieve full compliance with the criteria, but this requires investment and time. Given the limited funding, the timing of the refinements is long, the tasks are solved "under the contract."

Thus, he believes, the situation is currently unbalanced, but all its components are moving towards a state of equilibrium.

I would like to note that in the current situation, the formal approach to fulfilling import substitution requirements is not effective. The 100% replacement target is not set for all solutions. For example, the online replacement of DBMS and server operating systems is mandatory only if they are replaced or licenses are purchased. Otherwise, these costs may not be justified. It is much more important that the vendor has a replacement plan for the component, and government customers have an understanding of the direction of development for the future. If the task of import substitution is performed "for a tick," budget overspending cannot be avoided, "Konstantin Lyanguzov believes.

Pavel Svarnik, head of consulting at LANIT-Integration, adds that the pace of transition to domestic IT solutions is significantly behind the minimum necessary for several more reasons:

• lack of institutions capable of effectively financing investment projects for the creation of import-substituting products,
• Lack of skills in both product development and marketing.

It remains to be hoped that the measures of our government will contribute not only to the reactive filling of the register of domestic software, but also support the development of such an environment that will allow you to create truly sought-after and competitive products, "adds Pavel Svarnik.

Speaking about import substitution in IT, do not forget about system integrators. They have a leading role to play in this process. Some foreign companies have been on the market for many years. For a long time, their development centers independently solved many problems that arise when integrating products with each other. In the current situation, where manufacturers are quite young and their products are not widely distributed, it will take more than effort to ensure their quality collaboration from system integrators.

The operability of many complex solutions will have to be tested in corporate laboratories, and when implementing projects, there may be a need for a large-scale transformation of the entire IT architecture of customers, "explains a representative of Lanit Integration.

Sergei Razumovsky, executive director of Raidix, states that in the vast majority of government agencies and companies with state participation, the issue of import substitution has been put on the agenda and is being actively discussed, but not everyone is taking real practical steps.

According to him, the success of import substitution can now be characterized by the phrase "pilot implementations have been carried out." Many government customers, understanding the complexity of changing IT systems, went on the path of a phased transition to Russian solutions, starting so far with test installations and trial implementations. Based on the results of these steps, real migration to Russian technologies will be carried out, he said.

In some industries, foreign IT products still have nothing to replace. According to Sergey Ozhegov, CEO of SearchInform, this applies to system software, which Russian developers create on the basis of open source code of foreign programs.

Recently, such pseudo-ethnic IT solutions have been excluded from the state register. Because of this, both customers and developers are at a crossroads because they do not know what software they need to support. This ignorance creates additional problems, "he believes.

In itself, the development and certification of a new product is a time-consuming and slow process, so you should not wait for the explosion of new projects, but the further, the more completely Russian interesting and sought-after developments will appear, says Yevgeny Shchepilov, managing partner of the Service Business of I-Teco Group.

Sergey Kuryanov, director of strategic marketing at DoksVision, clarifies that Russian developers, realizing that no one with a budget will help, are investing in the development of import-independent solutions. In the face of a stagnation or decline in the software market, it is difficult to do this, but most still do.

Perhaps the state could invest more actively, especially in infrastructure software and application platforms, for example, to replace the .Net Framework. And, probably, it would not be worth ahead of the capabilities of developers by tightening requirements - products will not appear faster from this. We cope with our import substitution tasks and will not leave users without import-independent versions of our products, "says Kuryanov.

The pace of import substitution of software cannot be fast, said Yulia Kudryavtseva, director of strategic development at Forsyth. In this case, according to her, we are talking about very slow, progressive processes that cannot be accelerated. This is due to many reasons: firstly, we are talking about the capabilities of developers - the software development cycle is tangible in time, from year to three. Secondly, the customer's capabilities also have an impact: in the face of limited budgets, they are ready to switch to software replacement only after the life cycle of installed systems based on Western platforms is completed.

From our point of view, Russian customers have largely accepted the idea of ​ ​ switching to domestic software, moreover, there are enthusiasts of using Russian developments that recognize their advantages and set themselves the goal of achieving technological independence from Western vendors, "says Yulia Kudryavtseva.

It is important to note that Russian manufacturers are strongly influenced by the fact that a course on digitalization is now being taken at the state level. In many ways, this even complicates the task, as customers' requirements for software increase: they expect more serious opportunities and new prospects from Russian solutions, compared to Western software - otherwise the customer has no motivation to replace products. At the same time, the introduction of advanced solutions is a fundamentally new task, including for customers themselves, it requires a lot of effort, high time costs, additional budgets. This also delays the introduction of domestic products in time.

Another significant obstacle to import substitution is the so-called "dependence" of large customers on the solutions of Western vendors, which was developed over the years of using the software. It is extremely difficult for large enterprises to abandon "heavy" solutions, which, in fact, covered many of their needs. Most business processes are tied to these solutions. In this case, we are talking about the great difficulty in switching to Russian software, and about the doubts of customers related to the capabilities of Russian developments to cover such a wide range of tasks. But here there are their flagships - companies that decide to spend their resources on studying the market, exploring the possibilities of Russian solutions, and eventually embarking on large-scale changes.

We expect that after the wave of first implementations passes, it will be easier for other companies to make a decision and begin transformation, "adds Yulia Kudryavtseva.

Dmitry Mazein, Director General of the Group, says that recommendations to state-owned companies to choose domestic software do not help much, since customers still compare products in terms of functionality, convenience, flexibility of system settings, simplicity of the interface for the user.

We have been competing actively with solutions based on Microsoft Project Server for the past 6 years. Large customers, such as Russian Helicopters and Sukhoi Design Bureau, chose the Advanta system instead of these solutions, when the need for import substitution was not yet publicly mentioned, he adds.

Ivan Panchenko, Deputy General Director of Postgres Professional, notes that domestic software is not enough to immediately close all areas. At the same time, the main reason for the sluggish import substitution, in his opinion, lies in the lack of material prerequisites for its development.

The state tried to create a system of preferences for domestic software developers, but it does not work in full force. Almost four years ago, the Ministry of Communications prepared a plan for the development of domestic software, in which it was proposed to finance the development of products in several important areas, but this plan was not only not implemented, they did not even begin to implement it, "says the Postgres Professional expert.

In addition, the pace of real purchases of domestic software, which could stimulate its development and the expansion of the areas covered by it, shows a great pessimism of consumers, despite the fact that they are ordered to switch to domestic software. Many still hope to "sit out," Panchenko adds.

Mikhail Savelyev, director of business development at Informzaschita, also speaks about the painful process of import substitution due to lack of financing. He believes that it is not enough to simply declare that from the date X you need to buy only domestic. This domestic should still appear.

The problem is that customers want to just start buying software at the same prices, but domestic. And they cannot be reproached for this. But the developer needs to at least repeat the foreign analogue in a short time, as a maximum - to surpass. But do not forget that many thousands of man-years have already been spent on creating foreign software. And even though copying is kind of easier - you do not make as many mistakes as the one who went ahead, but you also need huge resources. Do not forget that the Russian market for many world vendors, according to their own recognition, is from 1 to 3 percent of their global revenue. So it is simply not necessary to keep comparable prices with a comparable staff of programmers and talk about the competitiveness of domestic solutions. Large-scale investments are needed: either through budget allocations to consumers or through producer financing. But they are not yet, "says Mikhail Savelyev.

According to him, there is no readiness for patience among customers. Heads of IT departments at various conferences talk about the reluctance to test products on themselves, about the inability to "roll back" to less advanced technologies for their business processes that they would receive on imported funds.

This is humanly understandable, but is a serious obstacle to the import substitution process as a whole. In addition to directives and instructions, it seems to me that it is necessary to conduct a separate campaign to promote the idea of ​ ​ import substitution without looking at difficulties. Otherwise, IT managers simply will not be motivated by real steps. And coercion will be responded to by suspension, sabotage or shifting responsibility to leaders of the highest level, for which they may not be ready. In addition, the figures for the necessary import substitution parameters do not take into account that in addition to acquiring licenses, it is still necessary to switch to new solutions. And this is not done by the maneuver of a magic wand. And this requires separate budgets, which are also not yet allocated. Of course, many will find a way to erupt, but it must be understood that the money that was planned to be spent on the development of systems will be spent on the transition, "adds the representative of Information Protection.

Customers are forced to take into account the risks and costs of projects. So, Yevgeny Sudarkin, CEO of Prof-IT Group, cites his company's project as an example:

Recently, we created a roadmap for the transition to domestic software for a large Russian enterprise. The amount of investments was comparable to the 3-year IT budget of production companies (on average, 1.5-2% of annual turnover). And this does not take into account the stable current IT infrastructure and the future costs of the client for technical support and retraining of employees.

Igor Sukharev, director of A-Real Consulting, believes that the prospect of changing the usual foreign solutions to Russian analogues still does not please many. He compares the situation with import substitution with the release of Federal Law No. 436, which obliged all educational institutions to use means to protect students from unwanted and unsafe information.

In the first 3-4 years, only one has become to use such software within the framework of the requirements of the Federal Law, and only 7-8 years later we can see how educational institutions began to massively establish systems for protecting children from unwanted information. But even here, one of the main reasons for the growth of demand can be called the increased number of inspections by the prosecutor's office. The situation in import substitution is about the same, since there are still ways to legally use foreign software, "he says.

Alexander Savelyev, Deputy General Director for the development of Intertrast software, believes that a certain "step back" during the import substitution process was the addition of Windows to the list of operating systems on which the registry product should work, which was indicated in the 325th Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation. At the same time, in his opinion, it seems somewhat strange that there are additional requirements for Russian software in the Resolution and the absence of similar requirements for foreign software.

It turns out. that there are no questions about the functionality of foreign software, but the Russian software must still prove its viability. And if anything is wrong, Russian software is excluded from the Register, which automatically increases the chances of foreign software for purchase, "concludes Savelyev.

2018

5 main obstacles to import substitution of IT solutions

1. Absence of full Russian analogues

In a number of areas, there are no domestic solutions that can replace Western systems at a qualitative level. In addition, Russian software may not be suitable for solving specific business tasks or not integrate with foreign systems that cannot be replaced by Russian counterparts.

Therefore, the transition should be phased and primarily concern areas in which there are high-quality Russian solutions, "said Anton Malkov, a member of the board of the Galaxy Corporation. - And then systematically move to the development and creation of domestic products in those areas where there are no analogues now.

Maxim Bogdanov, General Director of Ascon Group of Companies, believes that the insufficient functionality of Russian products and low competitiveness in certain segments of the IT market are an objective problem, since domestic software has not yet grown to some tasks.

Vadim Ipatov, Deputy General Director for Business Development of Intertrast, says that imported non-volatile software, as a rule, is built on open source platform software, and it is inferior in its characteristics to commercial software, in which more funds and resources are invested.

For example, PostgreSQL has about a thousand developers around the world, most of them work from time to time. Tens of thousands of people have been working continuously and purposefully at Oracle for several decades, "Vadim Ipatov cites the example.

According to Vasily Babintsev, director of marketing at Directum, many Russian developers were forced to revise their product development plans taking into account the import substitution program and divert resources from the development of new technologies.

The inclusion of developments in the register of domestic software requires work to bring the product itself in line with the requirements of ACT support. As a result, a paradoxical situation has developed: technology companies risk increasing the lag behind Western decisions, slowing down advanced research programs in favor of meeting the formal criteria of the import substitution program, which was just designed to increase the competitiveness of domestic software, he notes.

2. User habits and IT incompetence

Another obstacle to import substitution is the inability of users to rearrange themselves with new solutions, the lack of appropriate competencies among IT specialists who must introduce and support new products, as well as the inertia of management accustomed to certain technologies.

So, Vladimir Rubanov, managing director of Rosplatforma, calls the inertia of technical specialists and directors who are accustomed to certain sets of technologies and do not have enough knowledge and skills to work with something new, among the main obstacles to replacing foreign software.

Leonid Kokovin, director of the office for working with regional authorities, Softline believes that it is not easy to change the habits both at the level of users of imported solutions and at the level of IT specialists who will implement and support them. At the same time, the cost of introducing Russian software, according to his data, is comparable, and sometimes exceeds the cost of continuing to use foreign software (software cost, implementation cost, cost of retraining personnel, maintenance).

It is difficult for employees who have worked in the same system for many years to master the new internal IT infrastructure. And for companies in which traditional business processes prevail, the issue of digital trust in usual actions will be decisive. Nevertheless, in both cases, it is necessary to train highly qualified personnel who will help to accompany, as well as expand the portfolio of digital skills from the employees themselves, "said Galina Akhmerova, deputy general director for commerce and business development at BARS Group.

Alexander Nazarov, Sales Director of SADTESIS Document and Task Management System of Haulmont, adds that the transition to domestic software can be sabotaged by employees who do not want to learn how to work with a new system for them.

Software replacement is a time-consuming process that requires financial and time. Often it is difficult for employees to rebuild, get used to new products, "explains Alexander Baboshin, deputy head of the IT department of the Russian Auction House.

3. Limited IT Budgets

Replacing imported software in operating systems in a short time and without significant financial costs is often simply impossible. Many companies cannot simultaneously abandon foreign solutions that have been introduced for more than one year, and switch to domestic systems. In addition, customers find it difficult to find enough funds for such a migration.

For many customers, the financial factor plays a significant role - a gradual software update was planned in their budgets, and not a radical replacement of the IT landscape of the enterprise, "explains Alexander Nazarov. - The company "Houlmont" in this regard meets customers and offers significant discounts on licenses.

According to Sergei Braersky, head of the information logistics department of the Help Insurance Society, many companies fear that replacing imported software will be too expensive, and in an unstable economic situation it is difficult to allocate financing.

Our experience has shown that the price of domestic software can be affordable, the expert added.

Vasily Babintsev, director of marketing at Directum, also calls the obstacle the need to allocate a separate budget for import substitution. He adds that the transition from Western to domestic developments often does not bring additional efficiency - the same processes go to the new system, but at the same time you need to spend additional resources on the implementation and training of personnel.

Accordingly, import substitution is often considered as an investment only in terms of minimizing sanctions risks. In our experience, customers more quickly allocate budgets for the import substitution program if it brings obvious benefits: for example, the installed Western system is morally outdated, and the new domestic solution promises more functionality and greater process efficiency, which will recoup costs over time, "says a representative of Directum.

Dmitry Livshits, CEO of Digital Design, recalls that the state does not have additional financing for import substitution in the field of IT.

4. Fragmentation of domestic manufacturers' proposals

A number of experts call the main obstacle the disunity of the proposals of domestic manufacturers as opposed to import-substituted solutions, which are often integrated with each other and are thereby convenient for operators.

At the same time, as Leonid Kokovin, director of the department for working with regional authorities, most Softline customers are not ready to solve issues of compatibility between software products and hardware platforms.

Ivan Shumovsky, head of infrastructure solutions, CROC gives examples when a Russian product works only on top operating system Windows of and is incompatible with Russian operating system distributions or Russian application, ON which works only DBMS from production, has Oracle not yet been transferred to Russian database versions.

5. Reluctance to be a pioneer

No one wants to be a pioneer in the thorny way of using untested domestic solutions and stuffing bumps, said Ekaterina Medvedeva, a strategic marketing specialist at AstroSoft.

Many Russian developments are "young" compared to foreign ones, so customers are used to believing that their operational experience is not enough to show the reliability of the product, "said Alexander Baboshin from the Russian Auction House.

Igor Chizhevsky, deputy head of the department of the FSBI Research Institute "Sunrise," also sees the absence of a significant number of "success stories" among the obstacles. As a result, customers are afraid to apply something that no one has worked with.

Anton Malkov, a member of the board of Galaxy Corporation, believes that the more successful projects there are, the more companies will rebuild their IT strategies in favor of domestic solutions. Everyone is waiting for a demonstration of the results of already launched projects, he is sure.

Other obstacles

Among other obstacles to import substitution, Russian experts call the established, but far from always justified stereotypes that Western solutions are better than Russian ones and the established market for business consultants of Western technologies, which need time to rebuild to domestic solutions.

Another problem is the "sharpening" of the existing infrastructure under the decisions of foreign vendors, and as a result, the significant cost of switching to domestic or free solutions.

In addition, many domestic companies, compared to large Western vendors, often lack significant opportunities to lobby and promote their own IT solutions. Others simply did not have time to build a well-established chain that ensures the promotion of created products, including a marketing component, sales through partner channels and service support. Because of this, they are unknown in the market.

2017

Major Challenges and Obstacles to IT Import Substitution

You can list a lot of problems and obstacles of import substitution of IT in Russia, however, the main ones are still three factors. The first is finance. Customer budgets are limited, so having purchased expensive software once, they will soon invest in updating it. The second factor is the absence of competitive domestic solutions in a number of categories. As a result of this, to replace already proven time and proven Western decisions, there must be sufficiently strong arguments. And the third is time. You cannot simply take and replace solutions that have been created and implemented for years by clicking your finger.

Vladimir Andreev, president of DoksVision, believes that the most important problem is the technological lag behind the leading countries producing iron and software. This problem has been accumulating for years and catching up with the advanced technological market - a super-complex, expensive and long goal, the expert believes.

In his opinion, it is still necessary to take into account the interconnectedness of the complex of technologies.

For the application to work "in a clean field," nothing special is needed - the operating system and the DBMS. Although this is a lot. But in reality, you need a lot more - network iron and software, network administration tools, backpacks, storage. Progress has begun throughout this front, but it will take a lot of time, money and effort to achieve significant results, says Andreev.

Vladimir Vertogradov, Managing Director of NORBIT (LANIT Group of Companies), also speaks about the lack of readiness of Russian products to replace imported analogues. In addition, according to him, a small number of consulting and service companies are also a serious obstacle, ready to be responsible for the implementation of projects based on domestic rather than imported software.

The risks of the operability of domestic software now in most projects fall on the customer, and not on the service provider, "he notes.

Ivan Taranenko, head of the comprehensive solutions department of Gandalf Group of Companies, says that in many categories of software and equipment there are no Russian developments that are commensurate in functionality and cost with foreign analogues. In addition, the finished IT infrastructure of enterprises, built on the use of foreign software and equipment, is extremely difficult to introduce domestic developments due to the incompatibility of hardware and software connections, the representative of Gandalf notes.

Tagir Yapparov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of AITI Group of Companies, adds that customers have already accumulated a significant amount of inherited systems implemented on foreign technologies. In many cases, these systems are critical to the business, and replacing them is very difficult.

Another complexity, more of a mental property. Over the years, the dominance of foreign manufacturers has developed a certain distrust of Russian technological solutions. It is difficult to overcome this distrust in a short period of time and here representatives of the Russian industry should be as open as possible, promote the capabilities of their products and promote successful business cases, Tagir Yapparov believes.

Marketing Director of Electronic Office Systems (EOS) Elena Ivanova also notes a somewhat biased approach to domestic software.

Of course, recently the principle of "foreign is better than ours" has become less and less relevant, but it still exists in the heads of many. In the segment of SED and ECM systems in which our company works, the situation is much more prosperous than in other areas of IT (still, the document flow in Russia has its own specifics, which foreign decisions have not always been able to take into account), but even here there are still some biases, "said Elena Ivanova.

In addition, she explains that like any initiative that comes "from above," import substitution in our country meets with some resistance. Of course, many understand that when using foreign solutions, there may be problems with protecting investments in them and servicing, but the sense of resistance to what the regulator offers is very strong. "This is perhaps one of the main problems," adds the EOS marketing director.

Boris Bobrovnikov, CEO of the CRIC, adds that technology and IT solutions cannot be simply taken and replaced by clicking a finger. This requires not just a huge amount of time, but also serious investments, which is extremely difficult, given the limited capabilities of both private companies and the state in the current period.

Technologies have been developed and honed by foreign manufacturers for more than one year in fierce competition and with higher demand. Therefore, despite the fact that after two years, analogues of some solutions, some software products begin to appear, they still need time to achieve the corresponding world level, "says the director general of the CRIC.

Speaking about engineering software for industrial enterprises, the general director of Ascon Group of Companies Maxim Bogdanov notes that the main obstacle to import substitution has developed historically - this is the deepest dependence of large high-tech enterprises, market leaders, on foreign IT.

These are mainly state-owned companies from the aviation industry, ship and engine industry, and the space industry. The product life cycle here is very long, and if at the start of development the technology platform was a foreign system (CAD, PLM), it is almost impossible to replace it "on the go." For example, a new aircraft is being developed, dozens, or even hundreds of others, are involved in cooperation with the parent enterprise. All of them must exchange data, documentation. If you replace a key IT tool at some point, you risk losing data and stopping production. And CAD-, PDM systems for an industrial enterprise are the brain, heart and circulatory system at the same time, "he says.

It is extremely difficult to realize this technological dependence and especially overcome it - both the enterprise as a whole and its employees, the general director of Ascon believes. Therefore, even now, when many enterprises and concerns have come under sanctions, when there are all kinds of orders restricting the use of foreign software, this dependence continues to be fixed. Examples when a state-owned enterprise makes a strong-willed decision to switch to Russian engineering software are isolated, he adds.

Today we are seeing not only a large-scale update of foreign software where it has been used for decades, but also the purchase of new licenses to equip new jobs for billions of rubles. And the fact that state customers continue to finance foreign vendors for many years to come is certainly a problem. Nevertheless, you need to understand that although in the field of engineering software import substitution can be implemented in a fairly wide class of products: design systems (CAD), systems for preparing control programs for CNC machines (CAM), systems for managing engineering data and product lifecycle (PDM/PLM) - nevertheless, domestic products can not solve all the tasks of industrial enterprises. Replacing "heavy" highly specialized calculations or industrial CAD (for example, in shipbuilding or aircraft engineering) is much more difficult - there are simply no Russian analogues, "says Maxim Bogdanov.

Galina Akhmerova, Deputy General Director of BARS Group for Commerce and Business Development, believes that the inability to make a complete replacement of software in customer information systems in a short time is a key problem that has both technical and financial roots. Firstly, companies are tied to the need to maintain the operability of existing systems based on imported software. Secondly, the issue of docking is important, namely the need to select the appropriate certified software, which should correctly interact with each other and be in the Register of Domestic Software. The financial problem is the limited IT budgets of customers: once purchasing expensive software, the company will soon have money to update it.

The position of foreign vendors in the IT market is still strong: competition with foreign counterparts is a serious obstacle to the promotion of domestic software. However, import substitution conditions are more conducive than ever to this advance: the industry needs to change quickly and qualitatively, mastering the opened horizons, "Galina Akhmerova believes.

Another challenge is the fact that existing complex IT systems and end-to-end solutions are growing into the infrastructure of companies. This infrastructure has become more complicated for more than two decades, and almost everything needs to be changed for import substitution.

The main obstacle to import substitution in the field of software development is the legacy that was created before the trend towards the transition to Russian software began, "says Alexei Smirnov, technical director of the Netrika IT company. - In cases where the import substitution process is economically justified, it is not always possible to make an operational and at the same time planned intervention in the ongoing development and support of the software. This is faced by many companies using licensed foreign developments, which are also associated with systems maintenance processes. It is often difficult to make a "substitution."

Many find it difficult to take such a step, even though solutions have appeared on the market that can solve a particular problem. For example, open source software of the appropriate purpose, replacing computing hardware, cloud technologies or IT infrastructure virtualization solutions with open source software, "explains Boris Bobrovnikov.

According to Elena Ivanova, users are hindered by a lack of knowledge about the capabilities of free software, which many still associate with difficulties and an unfriendly interface, although this is not true. In addition, for a long time our universities trained users of almost exclusively foreign software products - this was actively lobbied by vendors. Therefore, the process of import substitution is very slow, she said.

Vladimir Rubanov, managing director of Rosplatforma, also agrees with the marketing director of EOS. He notes that the long-term investments of foreign vendors in "putting on the needle" of Russian specialists, including from the school or university benches, are now well protected by the inertia of these very specialists and directors, accustomed to certain sets of technologies and not motivated to expand knowledge and skills to work with alternatives.

There are also standard psychological aspects - bias against domestic products and fears that "we will have to strain" during the period of perestroika and migration. There are also objective obstacles, for example, when the organization has already purchased a large amount of licenses for foreign software and does not have budgets for switching to domestic analogues, even with their lower cost and good quality, Rubanov adds.

Pavel Frolov, producer of the robotic educational company ROBBO, says that the existing IT infrastructure is still completely based on foreign software.

This is due to the fact that moving away from the used solutions entails not only the supply of new ones, but also data migration, and employee training and much more. This is a painful process, and its implementation requires a lot of effort from all employees of the organization in which the migration takes place, "he notes.

Elena Golovanova, Advisor to the General Director of Svemel Profit Center, identifies two main problems of import substitution of IT in Russia. The first is the disbelief of state customers in the presence and effectiveness of Russian software developments. The second is the reluctance, and often the financial impossibility, to replace all foreign IT departments with domestic ones.

It is easier and cheaper to write a justification for the impossibility of purchasing domestic software. Requests for information have increased dramatically. Our questions - and why do you need it - are very often answered: we write the justification for the refusal, "says Elena Golovanova.

Anatoly Volkov, CEO of RDTECH, notes that as a result of the change in the ruble exchange rate in 2014, IT budgets were optimized, and the emphasis shifted towards maintaining the existing infrastructure. The introduction of new systems requires significant resources both for the development and adaptation of the technological base, and for the attraction and training of qualified personnel.

Another obstacle he calls the need to purchase little-studied software and equipment instead of products that have been tested by time and have proven themselves in the international market.

Also, according to him, the problem of supporting previously implemented foreign systems arose, which sooner or later leads to the need to switch to another platform, and this always carries the risks of failures in data migration. This fact also stops some Chief information officers.

Tagir Yapparov recalls that import substitution in IT, as a national project, has actually just started, because a year and a half is not a deadline for such a technologically and organizationally difficult task. Therefore, the main problems of import substitution in IT are also quite understandable.

If in the field of business applications Russian developments are wider, then the level of operating systems, intermediate layer solutions, DBMS, only in recent years began to be filled with domestic systems based on international ACT projects.

It should also be noted that the maturity of the supplier itself, the presence of long-term product development plans, the construction of the entire business chain - service partners, integrators are very important for the market. Many Russian developers are only at the beginning of the formation of such an ecosystem around their products, "says Yapparov.

Sergey Galeev, CEO of Addreality, adds that support for IT entrepreneurship in Russia began not so long ago, and therefore there are not so many high-quality domestic products on the market. This, in turn, affects the choice of companies that are afraid to take risks and switch to Russian solutions.

Maxim Bolyshev, deputy director of the RS-Bank banking software department of R-Style Softlab, also calls the main problem of import substitution of information technologies in Russia the lack of competitive solutions of Russian production in a number of areas.

An example is the scope of system software: we do not (and in the near future cannot) have our own operating system, since such solutions are created for years with huge financial investments. What is now registered in the registry as a Russian OS is, as a rule, no more than adapted by our Linux developers. Nevertheless, I believe that this is also a huge plus and a step not only towards import substitution, but also the real creation of the domestic OS, "Bolyshev notes.

Dmitry Baranov, Head of Infrastructure Solutions, Service Management, Softline Group, holds a similar position. The main problem, he said, is the limitation on the presence of solutions and their performance.

There are domestic solutions, but not in all areas, and sometimes they do not always work as high as the customer would like. Further, for example, to the decisions of foreign vendors, which customers cannot refuse for a number of reasons, it can be difficult to tie domestic products without losing the technical support of a foreign vendor. Infrastructure software is characterized by a great degree of integration: it is not always possible, for example, to even simply "pull out" the DBMS and replace it with some other one. This can lead to major changes in the infrastructure, performance may deteriorate, and it is not known whether the new system will be compatible with other components. And no customer will change the DBMS, which controls its production stably and with a predictable result, to a new solution. Because he can suffer financial losses. At the same time, it is quite realistic to replace those decisions that are not business-critical - for example, the electronic document management system, especially if there are good Russian analogues, "says Dmitry Baranov.

Alexander Belov, Director of the System Engineers Department of the Compulink Group of Companies, notes that in the course of the state's promotion of import substitution policies, certain segments of IT show activity and arouse interest from customers or, on the contrary, are forced to recognize their insolvency or unprepair. For example, the domestic software market has been showing slow but stable growth for the second year. The register of Russian software, created in early 2016, during its existence was replenished with 2590 products (data at the end of 2016). The information security market can also be considered the pride of domestic IT specialists with confidence. In this area, Russian developers make confident competition to foreign colleagues.

It should be borne in mind that this or that law, including regarding import substitution, is adopted against the background of foreign policy changes, as well as based on security considerations (countering terrorist activities). Therefore, in the course of implementing any of the strategies, the law has to either "soften" or add amendments to it, "says Belov.

According to Evgenia Naumova, head of the Kaspersky Lab corporate sales department in Russia, developing IT solutions, both software and hardware, takes quite a long time, so the course on import substitution will be able to lead to the growth of the domestic IT industry, but not now, but in the longer term - starting from six months for simple services and solutions, up to two to three years for more complex software platforms.

In those areas in which there are not enough domestic developments, and this, for example, is most complex hardware solutions - you need to start doing something in order to gradually reduce the distance to Western counterparts. In this process, you can use the experience and achievements of those Russian manufacturers who already have experience in designing and creating their own competitive solutions, "said Evgenia Naumova.

Vasily Babintsev, marketing director of DIRECTUM, recalls that the import substitution plan includes several blocks. First of all, it implies the replacement of business applications, including ERP, SED and CRM systems, with domestic software. This includes the MS Office suite (Word, Excel, and more). Secondly, the plan takes into account operating systems as a separate unit: mobile and user, server and DBMS - those software products that cannot now be completely replaced by domestic ones, but you can switch to free software.

For medium-scale companies (about 100 computers), there are not so many problems in the field of import substitution. At the DBMS level, PostgreSQL, Linux-based operating systems, office software are offered as freely distributed, for example, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and domestic proprietary "MyOffice." The largest choice among business applications (SED) is both domestic systems, such as DIRECTUM or Directum RX, and open platform solutions, the most famous of which is Alfresco. But it is also worth noting that a fully impotent effective end-to-end solution (DBMS + OS + office software + SED) will be extremely difficult to assemble, "said Vasily Babintsev.

At the same time, for large, especially distributed companies, an end-to-end solution will be impossible to build at all, the representative of DIRECTUM believes. ACT solutions begin to lean on scalability and support: no one guarantees that such a system will work on an industrial scale without the presence of an expensive IT team (which today is only possible for IT companies).

A year and a half ago, representatives of the Postgres and Linux communities of the Russian Federation themselves were skeptical of supporting the DBMS infrastructure and operating systems at the level of a large enterprise, describing such projects as very risky in terms of stability. In this regard, the user infrastructure built around Microsoft products that have already become familiar seems at the corporate level more understandable, predictable and economical. It was also significant to sign a resolution on new rules for office software (which included SED), which involve mandatory work under Windows 7 and above, "says Babintsev.

The sales director of the EDMS THESIS Control System of Documents and zadachamialeksandr Nazarov, arguing on the market of EDMS, notes that any global problems and obstacles in respect of import substitution are not observed here.

There are some problems associated with the inclusion in the register of the Ministry of Communications of systems conscious on the basis of foreign closed platforms or products, as well as systems that exist for a short time or almost only "on paper." However, to date, work is visible to eliminate errors and exclude such products from the registry. This certainly gives optimism, "he says.

Lev Matveev, Chairman of the Board of Directors of SerchInform, believes that the problem of import substitution is characterized by the saying "we wanted, as best as usual." The initiative, in his opinion, has become a feeder for interested persons, for unfair competition.

You can't let a wolf guard sheep. People who have their own business and private interests, which they pursue, were put on the expert council for entering the Register of Russian Software. This is not only my opinion, there have been several major scandals in the IT community over the past year. For example, a sensational letter from the president of the NP Russoft, which suspected experts of a conflict of interest and personal interest.

There is no need for incomprehensible experts who refuse to be included in the Register without explanation, delay the deadlines and sometimes simply do not understand what they are talking about. In the network, you can find a lot of examples when companies were refused due to the lack of certificates that they do not need for their activities. But I remember most of all the case when in an official letter the information protection software was called a medical system.

We need a formalized, clear and transparent procedure for accepting software into the Register. We need not experts, but lawyers who check - the company is domestic or not. At the same time, lawyers will do this quickly, and not stretch the process for months and years. And to interpret the criteria unequivocally, and not "who is in what city," Matveev believes.

Igor Litvinov, head of the system architecture department of LANIT-Integration (part of the LANIT group), adds that Russia has never been among the leading suppliers of IT equipment and software, so this cannot be changed in the short term.

Do not try to "import" everything. Rather, we should talk about point replacement of equipment and software where it affects the security of the state and large business, the expert sums up.

Read also

• The battle for the ICT infrastructure market in Russia: will domestic manufacturers be able to turn the tide?
• Review: Import substitution of information technologies in Russia
• Benefits of replacing foreign IT solutions with domestic solutions
• Main risks of import substitution of IT
• Import substitution of information technologies: 5 "For" and 5 "Against"
• How did import substitution of IT affect the business of foreign vendors? A look from Russia
• How the launch of the registry of domestic software affected the business of Russian vendors
• What changes are happening in the Russian IT market under the influence of import substitution
• Major software import substitution projects in 2015-2016
• Estimates of prospects of import substitution in a public sector participants of the market