Trends in the Russian data center market

2023: Data center construction is booming in Russia. 'Never built that '

Russian integrators note an unprecedented increase in requests for the construction of data centers in 2023. TAdviser at the end of August found out opinions in a number of large player companies about the reasons for this trend. Several reasons were voiced, while the interviewed experts agree that deferred demand played a significant role here.

The company "CROC" in August at a press event said that this year customers generate a huge number of requests for the construction of data centers.

We see a growing number of requests for data centers, confirmed, among other things, by the transactions that we conduct. I would say that this is some kind of "boom," we have never built so much, stunning demand, - said Sergey Paukov, director of the department of engineering and multimedia systems "CROC."

Especially recently, the demand for large data centers has increased - more than 1 thousand racks, the supplied capacity is more than 5 MW. Several projects for the construction of such facilities are currently being implemented in Russia.

Valentin Gubarev, Deputy General Director for Business Development, Director of the CROC Infrastructure Solutions and Services Department, says that over the past year, their company has doubled the direction of large infrastructure projects, which includes, among other things, data centers.

CROC saw growth in this area a year before, but the events of 2022 suspended these processes, because customers had to redesign a lot due to the departure of foreign vendors from Russia. Any complex, complex projects include a large range of products from different manufacturers, and in 2022 it was necessary to turn it all over, find new analogues, so the projects slowed down. And in 2023 they "unfrozen," and by the end of the year in "CROC" they expect a doubling of this direction.

The demand is fueled by the fact that some customers, especially those related to critical information infrastructure (CII) facilities, now do not want to store data in the clouds, preferring to acquire their own sites.

Lanit-Integration (part of Lanit Group of Companies) also sees a revival in the data center market, and points to the same thing as CROC as one of the factors that fuel the level of demand - for the launch of projects that were paused in 2022 due to the need to find new equipment and reliable suppliers. In other words, today data center operators are implementing projects that have already been planned or frozen at the construction stage, said Oleg Aksenov, director of the Lanit-Integration technical department .

The market has definitely rebuilt. This can be seen in numbers. For example, in 2022, about 6 thousand racks were introduced in Russia, and according to the results of the period 2023-2024, several times more are expected, - Oleg Aksenov told TAdviser.

Sergei Lysenko, general director of Atomdat (controlled by Rosenergoatom, part of Rosatom State Corporation), indicates that 2022 significantly exceeded the balanced forecast of analysts in terms of the number of actually introduced data center capacities. The number of capacity announced for commissioning in 2023 exceeds last year's figures.

At the same time, over the past couple of years, there have been qualitative changes in the type of companies implementing data center projects. If earlier construction was carried out exclusively by data center operators who design and build data centers "for themselves," now professional developers who create projects for subsequent sale or lease have also begun to enter the market. Moreover, as a rule, such projects are not created for a specific customer, it appears already in the process of project implementation.

In world practice, the segment of commercial data centers is often referred to as the segment of commercial real estate, and the experience of companies operating in this market makes it possible to achieve a significant reduction in the time and cost of construction. This year was a vivid example of such transactions in the capital's market, among such examples is our Atomdata group of companies, which recently completed the acquisition of the Moscow-2 data center with a capacity of over 3,600 racks, which will be commissioned early next year, - said TAdviser Sergey Lysenko. - Obviously, the development of the segment of commercial data centers is becoming economically attractive for the segment of the so-called "captive" data centers, which large companies created for their needs.

Relative to the "boom" - the segment of commercial data centers is absolutely market-based and reflects the increasing demand for infrastructure and cloud services. Earlier, a shortage of free capacity periodically arose in the capital's market, but the market quickly adapted to new requests.

Softline agrees with market colleagues that in 2023 the number of customer requests for the construction of a data center is significantly higher than before, and also point to delayed projects as one of the factors. Secondly, 80% of the equipment of engineering systems is the product of Western manufacturers, due to problems with the supply of spare parts for them, replacement with domestic analogues is required.

The third reason is the active construction of data centers in Russia, which began in the late 2000s, and now many data centers need reconstruction or modernization, due to the approach to the end of their life cycle. At the same time, commercial data centers are developing due to the limited supply of Western companies in our market, "Kirill Solev, Head of the Engineering Infrastructure Department of the Data Center, Softline, explained to TAdviser.

In addition to pent-up demand, C3 Solutions, a partner of Softline, considers the desire of customers to reduce risks from the use of foreign cloud services as an additional factor, which leads to an increase in demand for services of Russian commercial data centers.

And no one has canceled the annual increase in demand for computing power either, "said Leonid Yul, director of competency development at C3 Solutions data center.

In addition to the aforementioned Moscow-2 data center, among the major current and planned projects for creating data centers, about which information was publicly announced in 2023, is a project to create a data center Xelent-2 near St. Petersburg (Atomdata Center), launch of the first own data center, Wildberries plans to create its own data centers VC in and, To Moscow St. Petersburg the planned facility "Megaphone" in the Leningrad Region, plans and to Key Point 3data create a network of data centers in different regions of Russia, construction of the facility at the site of the Industrial and Logistics Park in the Novosibirsk Region (Key Point together with the Investment Development Agency of the region and the government of the Novosibirsk region), etc.

Photo: atomdata.ru

2020

Data center trends

A data center is a product unique in its kind. It should be created by a team of specialists with comprehensive and deep knowledge in the construction of engineering infrastructure, as well as the equipment of IT and telecommunication systems. As a result, often the data center is a child, if not seven nannies, but three for sure: Uptime Institute experts noticed that the engineering services are responsible for the data center, the company considers it as a real estate object, and its effectiveness depends on IT.

Indeed, the trend of informatization implies not only a radical increase in the volume of digital data, but also its intelligent processing in real time in accordance with current business tasks. And this, in turn, determines the growing requirements, firstly, for the reliability of the data center, secondly, for the automation of data processing and, thirdly, for the management of data and data center systems. Recent global events such as the coronavirus pandemic are further pushing the introduction of digital solutions and the development of remote service delivery models. How does the data center industry respond to the needs of change?

Overall Data Center Growth

New data center capacities are being put into operation constantly. True, full-fledged market research is regularly carried out in terms of commercial data centers. According to iKS-Consulting, the number of put into operation racks in commercial data centers in Russia in 2019 increased by 12.3% and reached 44.1 thousand racks. The expected value for 2020 is 49.9 thousand racks, iKS-Consulting reported.

And in the coming years, the rate of this growth will be even higher.

The difficult beginning of 2020, associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and the upcoming economic downturn, may slow down the development of the industry, but the crisis has shown high demand in information technologies and business digitalization. This factor gives hope for market growth in the near future, - said Stanislav Mirin, head of data center at iKS-Consulting.

It is noteworthy that the coronavirus, indeed, had a positive impact on the data center market. Last year, Gartner analysts predicted that by the end of 2020, the trend of strong growth in data center and cloud services, which has shown growth of a couple of tens of percent over the past years, will significantly slow down, which is due to global economic instability.

However, the coronavirus has made its own adjustments, - says the Pavel Goryunov technical director of data centers CROC the network. - Against the background of self-isolation and the growth of online services, the demand for data center-based services has naturally increased. According to our data, the number of requests for services has grown by about 20% since April 2020. By the end of the year, even despite stabilization, the picture will not radically change, since companies will not leave the self-isolation regime overnight, or even decide to work remotely constantly.

According to Stanislav Mirin, the share of commercial data centers in stable places today is about 10-15% of the total volume of data center infrastructure. This share, the analyst believes, will grow in proportion to the increase in requirements for data center reliability, which is often difficult to achieve in-house, as well as new examples of outsourcing and changing customer mentality.

In addition, the speed of deployment of a new infrastructure, which is often needed for business and which can only be provided through commercial data centers or clouds, plays in favor of commercial data centers, adds Stanislav Mirin.

We are seeing the transition of customers to commercial data centers and clouds, but the main market segment is still corporate data centers.

The expert is confident that the share of commercial data centers and clouds in the total market volume will grow, as this increases quality and reliability, reduces prices.

Having your own infrastructure is a less efficient approach, but in some cases can be justified by security requirements. This factor will cease to operate when the market for commercial data centers becomes even larger and more mature, Ilya Hala believes.

Consolidation vs. decentralization

Interestingly, with the current imbalance in the volumes of the corporate and commercial sectors of the data center, there is no direct outflow of customers from one sector to another. Experts note that both segments of the data center are growing: commercial and corporate data centers. The fact is that there are two multidirectional trends in the market at the same time: consolidation and decentralization. On the one hand, consolidation meets the needs of reducing infrastructure costs. On the other hand, decentralization is driven by the needs of IoT tasks, support for the mobility of users of information systems and real-time applications.

Alexander Sysoev, Head of Computing Infrastructure at CROC IT Company, identifies two relevant areas of evolution of the data center structure. The first is typical for large businesses - it consists in the development and modernization of their own data centers and infrastructure in them, including, as an option, the creation of private corporate cloud infrastructures. The second is especially common among small and medium-sized commercial customers - this is a tendency to migrate to public clouds and, as an option for state customers, migration to the state region.

Konstantin Zinoviev, director of engineering infrastructure at Rubytech, speaks about the growing popularity of the Colocation principle, when the customer's equipment is located on the territory of the provider in the Data Center, as the driving force behind the popularization of the private cloud:

Already, we can see a consistent transition of large companies from a traditional IT infrastructure to a private cloud.

This trend, according to the expert, is confirmed by IDC studies, which show that in the 1st quarter. 2020 revenues from the implementation of cloud IT infrastructure solutions increased by 2.2% compared to the same period of the previous year, while revenues from the implementation of traditional IT infrastructure solutions sank by 16.3% compared to last year.

Yuri Novikov, head of cloud technology development at Softline, confirms that most of the on-premiere projects during the pandemic have switched to a cloud format, primarily due to restrictions on access to data centers and to one or another physical manifestation of infrastructure.

Implementing projects in the clouds has now become much easier, faster and cheaper, and a sufficient number of SMB businesses have begun to move into the clouds. We see increased demand from medium-sized businesses - companies that used to use one or two servers in their server room began to move more actively to the clouds and use cloud services, - notes Yuri Novikov.

This issue is directly related to the structure of the digital economy, the profile of traffic consumption, as well as the influence of state regulation of the industry, notes Vladimir Leonov, technical director of the AMT G ROUP:

The global trend is obvious - the use of cloud infrastructures, both public and private, is mainly associated with the structure of the economy, namely the predominance of small and medium-sized businesses in the share of GDP, which reaches 50% or more.

Small and medium-sized businesses, mobile and dynamic, are not ready to invest in infrastructure projects such as data centers with long payback periods.

This is reflected in the storage and processing profile. data The share of medium and small businesses in GDP is much lower, and if so, then the need for cloud structures is lower, which is very clearly visible from the significant lag in the volume of cloud technology supply in Russia from developed countries, - sums up Vladimir Leonov.

These differences between the two key audiences of data center service consumption are manifested in the nature of the business needs that dictate the choice of this or that option.

The transition to the clouds is a significant step, the purpose of which is to standardize, unify and reduce the time for the commissioning of new services, - emphasizes Dmitry Chindyaskin, head of the technical directorate of I-Teco.

But for large companies, the requirements for fault tolerance of software services are often more priority.

Often they are such that they require the organization of disaster-resistant solutions that imply the use of the main and several backup sites, sometimes taking into account the significant geographical distance of the sites from each other, possibly tens and hundreds of kilometers, - explains the expert "I-Teco."

Fault tolerance is achieved by geographically distributed data centers that allow you to operate in active-active or active-standby mode.

As assured in "I-Teco," today this is one of the key topics for many state-owned companies and financial institutions. Its relevance is primarily related to the need to ensure the maximum possible fault tolerance of corporate services. In this regard, the company is going on a number of projects related to the development of the concept of the development of data centers of government agencies and companies with state participation, the development and construction of turnkey data centers from scratch, as well as the development of a methodology for migrating the customer's corporate services to the capacity of new data centers.

But for medium and small businesses, the abandonment of their own fleet of hardware capacity is characteristic in order to buy a "virtual data center as a service" provided to many IaaS operators, says Dmitry Chindyaskin:

This approach allows you to organize the entire corporate IT and service infrastructure in the operator cloud without the need to create and support it on the fleet of your own equipment, which significantly reduces the total cost of ownership of the infrastructure.

The pace of changes in the economy is accelerating, competition is growing. And services based on Data centers just help to adapt to this dynamics, get competitive advantages, bring products to the market faster, - adds Pavel Goryunov. - Not all companies are ready to spend 3-5 years creating infrastructure, when it can be obtained in a much shorter time according to the outsourcing model.

In recent years, the opinion of IT consumers about cloud services has changed a lot. Interest in the clouds is growing, both from businesses and government agencies. And this has become one of the main factors determining development trends in the data center segment, - notes Alexey Malyshev, founder and general director of Sonnet.

Indeed, today's data center customers have specific requirements for IT services: high availability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. Customers want fast and reliable access to resources, the ability to scale computing capacity at any time, and not overpay for unused (idle) resources.

The development of these trends in the last decade has led to significant changes in the principles of data center construction, - continues Alexey Malyshev. - We observe how in the last decade there has been a significant shift, both in the commercial model of service provision - the transition to a subscription scheme, and in technical terms: the use of virtualization technologies at all levels.

Due to the whole set of the above reasons, according to the estimates of the TMT Consulting analytical agency, the dynamics of clouds, somewhat reduced, but still overtaking the growth rate of the IT market, provides a sharp jump in demand for rapid capacity scalability without increasing capital costs during the period of self-isolation. At the same time, the policy on cost optimization, including IT infrastructure, remains and intensifies. For these reasons, the issue of the mass exodus of business into the clouds is far from as clear-cut as it might seem at first glance.

Specific features of the Russian route to the clouds

Some time ago, Oracle analysts predicted that by 2025 the number of corporate data centers would decrease by 80%, and the corresponding IT development budgets would be directed to cloud services. However, Accenture Technology estimates that most companies are currently only 20% in the cloud. The company's CEO Paul Doherty explains this by the fact that the move to 80% is a massive change that requires the creation of a bold new business model that encourages companies to move to the clouds.

Moreover, last year's IDC CloudPulse survey showed that 85% of organizations were going to shift the workload from public cloud services to a private environment within a year. Moreover, in the course of its own research, Nutanix found that 73% of respondents intend to return some applications from public clouds back to local IT systems. The main reason for this sentiment is the security of information systems.

In Russia, the situation looks somewhat different. "If on average in the world about 70% of companies use cloud technologies, then in Russia this figure is at the level of about 20%," said Yuri Novikov from Softline. Considering that the technical resource for moving to the cloud is quite accessible, the communication channels are well developed - fast and inexpensive are sufficient, then, as the expert believes, our market growth is almost endless.

{{quote 'The trend that was launched during the coronavirus pandemic has become a kind of impetus for all companies that have not previously used clouds, and this trend will be stable, - Yuri Novikov is sure. }}

Data from iKS-Consulting confirm this thesis: the growth of services in the IaaS segment in Russia amounted to 33% in 2019, and over the next five years the growth rate will be more than 25%. However, as Stanislav Mirin points out, two significant factors play against the widespread abandonment of their own infrastructure.

Firstly, for a stable amount of processed data, its own infrastructure turns out to be cheaper than transferring it to, outsourcing including by reducing network costs. Secondly, there are still strong concerns about the transfer of data to the infrastructure under external control.

These doubts are constantly dispelled by examples of successful projects, but the power of tradition is still strong. The mass consumer also has the same attitude towards transferring infrastructure not only to clouds, but also to commercial data centers using the colocation service, - comments Stanislav Mirin.

"A number of our customers create hybrid infrastructures in which" combat "systems are placed on-premium, and test and development environments are brought to the clouds," says Alexander Sysoev.

Hybrid structures - the hottest data center format

Our specificity lies in the fact that mainly large corporate, geographically distributed, hybrid data centers are being built, "says Vladimir Leonov from AMT GROUP.

In theory, the hybrid structure is the most balanced design, and today, when movement into the clouds of Russian companies is still gaining strength, the most optimal. Indeed, in addition to security considerations that require special modes and regulations for the relevant companies in the cloud, for many IT solutions and services, their architectural features create serious difficulties for transferring to the cloud. Therefore, gradual movement in the data center of the future is most convenient through hybrid IT systems.

The collective opinion of Russian companies was expressed by Vladimir Leonov from AMT GROUP: {{quote 'Large customers are interested in maintaining control over their data. At the same time, public clouds can be considered as a source of additional computing resources, a backup storage location or a backup site in case of a large-scale accident in their own infrastructure. In this case, it is especially important to take into account the high requirements for information security when using public cloud resources. }}

Data center providers estimate that the hybrid model also prevails.

Colocation or the cloud in its purest form is less common, and here's why: Combining different technologies gives the most returns. It's no secret that cloud resources are more efficient to use when working with services with dynamic load. And, on the contrary, it is better to place "static" in the data center, - explains Pavel Goryunov.

When placing a heterogeneous infrastructure in a data center, it is necessary to take into account both these and many other factors. For example, it is necessary to take into account the specifics of licensing software products that underlie enterprise business applications, since due to some, the use of a public cloud may not be advisable.

These considerations are consistent with world practice. Thus, Andrei Selikhov, leading commercial representative of the Hewlett Packard Enterprise technology solutions division in Russia, notes:

The most significant trends in the evolution of the data center structure are the development and expansion of IT services, both by the data center operators themselves and by the service providers hosting their equipment. Of course, this indicates the confident development of a hybrid data center using several sites where the equipment is located by customers according to the classic Colocation scheme, and part of the IT infrastructure is consumed by the data center operator/IT service provider according to the service model as a service with the ability to quickly increase the amount of consumed resources and return them back in case of load reduction.

According to HPE estimates, in addition to the classic IaaS (infrastructure as a service), new IT services in demand recently include:

• VDI remote workplaces (this became especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the remote trend).
• Backup virtual archive and backup environments Disaster recovery business critical environments.).
• Platform services (Kubernetes as a service, SAP hosting, environments for Devops). IT audit and migration services from different data centers or providers to a single hybrid.

One of the growing trends is the request for hybrid solutions that allow combining Russian data centers and global foreign ones, when the customer solves part of the tasks in global clouds, and part either in his private cloud or in local ones. Global data centers have specialized services, practices, knowledge, developments that have already been tested by time, but at the same time part of the data can be left in the Russian data center, where it is more convenient and cheaper to do it.

As a result, the request for Direct-connect is increased - a dedicated channel connecting the Russian data center with global data centers around the world. Thus, the customer creates a single network infrastructure that allows him to solve many of his tasks in terms of working with different clouds.

Multi-cloud world

Among the new trends in our market, experts note the emergence of multi-cloud services. They are based on the deployment of IT infrastructure on the resources of several cloud providers, which makes it possible to best distribute workloads between different providers, choosing the most favorable conditions. As the results of global research show, large enterprises are actively using this format of using IT services.

In our country, in particular, the Multi-Cloud Environment solution was launched last year by Selectel: customers have access to Selectel, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Cloud Intelligence Group (formerly Alibaba Cloud). To provide services, two cloud platforms with a location in the Russian Federation are used: "Virtual private cloud" based on OpenStack and "Cloud based on VMware."

Despite the obvious interest of the business in a multi-cloud strategy, the technical implementation of such a design is not an easy task. First of all, we are talking about the complexity of managing the integrated IT infrastructure of various suppliers and the limited possibilities of its automation.

In their Magic Quadrant for Data Center and Cloud Networking 2020 study published in June, Gartner analysts predict a rise in popularity in the coming years of the Cloud-Managed Data Center Networks concept. At the time of the report's release in June 2020, according to Gartner, fewer than 100 customers used cloud-based management-related options in their solutions, such as VMware vRNI and Cumulus NetQ. This state of affairs is explained by the limited available technical means. But vendor road maps give reason to expect that by 2023 such solutions will be implemented in 1,500 organizations. Gartner emphasizes that solutions will become available to small organizations in which a "two-switch" data center will support 1000 virtual machines.

In fact, the line between a multi-cloud network and a distributed cloud will gradually be erased. But this is a complex process, and today we are seeing only cautious attempts by key data center network vendors: Cisco, VMware, Arista, Extreme - to extend their local capabilities to public cloud infrastructures. Gartner expects that the number of customers using management consoles from their data center network providers to manage network configurations of the public cloud infrastructure will not exceed 1% until 2023.

It is likely that the reverse movement initiated by services such as AWS Outposts, Microsoft Azure Stack and Google Anthos will become more noticeable. For example, AWS Outposts is a rack that includes two network switches managed by AWS. According to Gartner's forecast, by 2023, more than 10% of large enterprises will use local public cloud infrastructure in their private data centers, which means growth compared to less than 1% in 2019.

In line with this direction, there is a consolidation of market forces around software for open networks in the SONiC (Open Networking in the Cloud) cloud, originally written by Microsoft, which is located in Microsoft Azure and other large cloud provider networks.

Thus, Nvidia acquires Cumulus Networks, whose software products for network equipment of the white-box category are focused on large data centers, clouds and corporate IT infrastructures. Obviously, we are talking about a serious strengthening of the developers of free network software for cloud data centers. Arista also bought Big Switch Networks, a provider of cloud software and open software-configurable networks. But Cumulus and Big Switch, acquired by vertically oriented suppliers, were among the most competitive companies that created a sustainable ecosystem of open networks. Experts say that a major breakthrough in the field of software-configurable and open networks, predicted a decade ago, is in reality happening right now before our eyes: a viable commercial ecosystem of solutions is being formed around open source NOS.

Gartner analysts expect that as a result, over the next two to five years, SONiC for data center networks will become an analogue of Linux as a server OS with the subsequent standardization of NOS.

In addition, what is happening means that the market for these products goes beyond hyperscale systems, including in its orbit an increasing number of service providers and corporate private clouds.

Movement towards hyperscale data centers

Analysts at Synergy Research Group calculated that in the first half of 2020, despite the pandemic raging in the world, 26 new hyperscale data centers opened in different countries. As a result, their total number has reached 541, and another 176 server farms of this class are under design or construction.

The Russian cloud provider IXcellerate relied on global hyper-cloud providers last year and did not fail - seamless connection of customers in the Russian Federation to such resources is in steady demand.

The SberCloud cloud partnership with Huawei is another option for an interesting market combination between a Russian and a foreign supplier in order to create a domestic public cloud. This platform will not only revive competition with leading local players such as Mail.ru Cloud and Yandex Cloud, but will also be able to take some of its customers from global hyperscalers. Indeed, as Fedor Prokhorov, CTO of SberCloud, says, business users today have access to more digital business services plus - through the AI Cloud cloud platform - the computing resources of the most productive Russian supercomputer Christofari.

Another thing is that in order for Russia to enter the club of leaders of the world data center market, Russia must build its own hyper-data centers, notes Stanislav Mirin and adds:

This is a prerequisite, but not enough. These data centers should be filled with demand. But today the domestic market is unlikely to provide such demand, and there are not enough stimulating factors for external demand.

True, Fedor Prokhorov looks at the situation more optimistic. He points out that unlike the global public cloud services market, which is expected to show modest growth of 6.3% this year, the growth of this segment of the Russian market this year amounted to 27% and reached 73 billion rubles. (The entire last year brought 93 billion rubles).

Virtual Data Center

The service "Data Center as IaaS" (or virtual data center), according to experts, is developing at the fastest pace. Indeed, a convenient model of service consumption is being implemented, in which the client does not need to purchase his own equipment at all and invest in its maintenance. And current technologies allow you to virtualize all business-critical applications and services in such a way that their quality and high reliability when placed both on physical servers and in a virtual environment will not differ at all. And in the virtual data center Softline, adds Yuri Novikov, at the request of the customer, an infrastructure can be built that will meet the requirements of the FZ-152:

And it will be much more profitable for the client compared to his own platform, since due to the economies of scale, the service provider has the opportunity to save on cost, but not to the detriment of quality.

The company "iTeko" offers the service "I-Teco center as a service" (DCaaS), which implies the opportunity to receive from one supplier the full range of outsourcing services for the management, support and development of IT infrastructure. Company representatives say that this opportunity is very attractive for startups, since it allows you to focus on the main idea of ​ ​ a new business without wasting power and money to create an IT infrastructure. Other companies will also find useful opportunities for themselves. For example, DCaaS is useful for optimizing IT costs, for quickly and cost-effectively organizing testing of new processes and configurations, creating backup resources for storing and archiving enterprise data.

In HPE terminology, "DPC as a Service" is called FaaS (Facilities as a Service), which means "Facilities/Equipment/DPC Facilities as a Service." The essence of the service is that a local modular data center is created on the customer's order, which is formed and operates in OPEX mode.

Russian data centers are growing in regions

If we take into account the territorial length of our country, many customers need geographically distributed data centers in order to reduce delays in the work of local units that are scattered around the country or around the world, - notes Yuri Novikov.

However, the coverage of the country's territory by data centers is very uneven: the regions of Moscow and St. Petersburg account for the lion's share of all data center capacities in the Russian Federation.

Sergey Mishchuk, director of product development in the field of data centers and cloud services at Rostelecom DPC, agrees:

Yes, today most of the data centers are located in Moscow, since there is a significant part of customers in Moscow. But the situation is gradually changing. To be closer to customers, operators open sites in the regions.

Serious changes in the market are associated with the programs for creating federal networks of data centers Rosatom and Rostelecom.

In the city of Udomlya, Tver Region, near the Kalinin NPP, Rostelecom and Rosatom placed two of their data centers on the same technological site: Udomlya (design capacity of 4 thousand racks) and Kalininsky (design capacity of 800 racks), respectively.

48 MW of electricity was supplied to the technological site, which makes it the largest in Russia and one of the largest in Europe. Close proximity to the nuclear power plant made it possible to achieve an attractive tariff for electricity, as well as a high level of safety of facilities.

According to Vera Gurova, CEO of RuSat — Digital Decisions (RDD R), Rosatom data centers are a response to the growing demand of the commercial market for reliable and secure IT solutions and services that avoid critical dependence on foreign suppliers. Therefore, the Kalininsky data center includes, in particular, the provision of virtual resources (IaaS), backup and corporate mail with support for 152-FZ requirements.

The Kalininsky data center is the first of Rosatom's network of georegulated disaster-tolerant data centers. The following are planned to be built in Innopolis (the satellite city of Kazan), Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Last year, Consyst-OC, Rosatom's internal integrator, entered the Data Centers market. It is assumed that the provider will begin its activities by providing services to regional executive authorities and commercial clients from nearby areas. After running the solution, it can be extended to all regions of the presence of Rosenergoatom NPP, including abroad. This will mean the implementation of Rosatom's declared intention of an international expansion plan for data center projects at nuclear power plants being built abroad.

Rostelecom DPC is developing its own federal network of Data centers, which will cover sites in Moscow, St. Petersburg,, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg Nizhny Novgorod other large cities. One of the metropolitan data centers under construction with a capacity of 17 mW will provide the maximum level of IV. Tier This level guarantees the operability of the data center, uninterrupted power supply and continuous cooling of IT equipment in any system failure. First of all, data center Tier IV is planned to be launched in the second half of 2021.

One of the main drivers of the growth in consumption of federal data centers is government agencies. The experiment with the GEOP (state unified cloud platform), which has been launched in the country, will further push the processes. This means that as the regional data centers of Rosatom and Rostelecom are put into operation, the flow of customers from state data centers to commercial data centers will be observed.

In general, the tendency of state customers to move into the clouds is obvious, - Konstantin Zinoviev believes, - A number of departments have long been minimizing the number of regional data centers and consolidating resources in their own large data centers. " However, the transition of government agencies to rented clouds will occur very slowly, the expert believes: "This is due to a number of security restrictions, requirements for competitive procedures in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation, etc.

Step-by-Step Data Center Availability

The digital transformation of the economy leads, among other things, to one important consequence - data processing should be carried out as close as possible in a geographical sense to the place where this data is used to solve certain business problems. Gartner analysts say this: "The infrastructure is where your data is." According to their estimates, by 2022, up to 60% of corporate IT infrastructures will be concentrated around data accumulations, and not located in traditional data centers.

Across the country, more organizations, commercial and government, are undergoing a digital transformation process. This requires a high-quality IT infrastructure, which, in turn, has led to increased demand for digital real estate: digital business centers, digital production and logistics parks, digital residential complexes. This process began recently, so not many projects have been implemented, but dozens of projects are underway throughout the country, and in the near future there will be hundreds of them, says Ilya Hala.

All digital real estate objects require a data center in close proximity, which objectively determines the growing need for the construction of new data centers, the expert believes. At the same time, data centers are becoming a typical infrastructure element of the digital economy, whose creation and development is directly related to the implementation of business projects of our customers, the development of cities and regions, often together with local developers.

This positioning of modern data centers brings to the agenda new requirements for data centers of the 21st century: they should be created as part of a more general digital infrastructure created in this territory, and in this capacity it is easy to deploy in the configuration that is necessary to solve business problems. In other words, much higher typing, flexibility and ease of creation are required than is typical for previous generation data centers. Accordingly, a new approach to typing and classifying data centers has emerged: an ecosystem of data centers of various sizes:

• Regional Data Center. Smaller than the classic centralized data center. It is focused on supporting applications sensitive to data transmission delay or communication channel bandwidth. Optimization of processing is key [[Article:Big Data (Big Data)|Big Data]]. Such a data center most often meets the requirements of the Uptime Institute Tier 3 standard.
• Local data center. Alternative to MegaData Center - a classic centralized center. Located in the same place where its users are located. This is a wide class of data center: from 1-2 MW to only 10-20 kW.
• MicroData Center. A small data center that includes several racks. Usually correspond to Tier 1.

An important feature of the elements of this new data center ecosystem is the presence of high factory readiness solutions on the market, which uses a set of proven approaches to reserving equipment, communication channels, and ensuring the required level of availability.

Container and modular data centers

From the point of view of high factory readiness, the market is conquering the concepts of modular and container data centers.

The modular principle is used at various levels of the data center design, says Oleg Kotelyukh, managing partner of Inpro Technologies:

From the introduction of modular components, such as cooling systems, to the construction of fully modular data centers. This design accelerates data center deployment, simplifies capacity expansion and maintenance, and provides high energy efficiency.

The container data center, as its name implies, is located in a special container equipped with the entire complex of telecommunication and engineering infrastructure and connected to communication channels.

Recently, the installation of container and modular data centers has become widespread. The advantage of this type of data center is the speed of deployment, the absence of dependence on the construction readiness of the site or the availability of the site, scalability (possibility of linear expansion), preservation of investments when moving, - says Dmitry Chindyaskin.

Thus, on the territory of the Kalininsky data center in Udomla, a site was created for 30 modular/container data centers with a capacity of up to 1 MW each.

Of course, absolutely all formats of data centers are developing now: large, small, modular. At the same time, data centers are developing as a single geographically distributed network. Various formats of data centers (large and small) should be interconnected by high-quality fiber-optic highways, - emphasizes Ilya Hala.

Changing the competitive landscape

Experts note the high interest of potential customers in pre-fabricated data centers in the regions. According to the magazine "ЦОДы.РФ" and the portal alldc.ru in the "dock" 2019, the growth of this demand was predicted at the level of 10-12% annually in the next few years. It was expected that in 2019 this market segment will surpass the psychological bar of a billion rubles.

One of the drivers of this development, experts call the creation of additional capacities of pre-fabricated data centers at large existing data center facilities for several hundred racks each. This approach, in particular, was implemented at the Beeline Data Centers in Yaroslavl and MTS in Nizhny Novgorod.

In general, the IT infrastructure industry continues to grow by 25-30% per year, which means that every three years it is necessary to put into operation as many new capacities of Data centers and equipment as in all previous times. Given the certain cyclical nature of investments in Data centers, this additionally creates from time to time a situation of either excess or lack of free capacity in certain regions on the market, "notes Oleg Lyubimov, CEO of Selectel.

The emergence of conceptual innovation in the data center market and the steadily growing demand for data processing services will inevitably transform the competitive environment.

Today in Russia there are about 20 market players who provide almost the same services. Accordingly, competition is a system-forming trend, thanks to which something new will be born for customers, - Yuri Novikov is sure.

For example, 3data uses combined formats in line with the development of the concept of data centers within walking distance.

Thus, as the first phase of the franchise data center in Synkovo near Moscow, a modular data center was first installed, after which the construction of a full-fledged stationary data center began.

In Moscow, we are now implementing the project according to the reverse scheme - first we are building a classic data center, and after that we will increase the design capacity using a modular solution. This approach allows you to reduce the time and cost of projects without reducing quality, - said the head of 3data Ilya Hala.

Vladimir Leonov from AMT GROUP points to an important detail of the current competition:

The industry driver in Russia is large service providers with data centers for thousands of racks that can reduce their own costs and earn money through a limited set of solutions and unification. But the needs of such suppliers do not always coincide with the needs of corporate customers.

Indeed, the end customer is interested in another - in the maximum flexibility of the solution.

Therefore, in the near future, data center solutions will develop, allowing the customer to aggregate services received from different sources, quickly change the placement of his own applications and scale his infrastructure between several data centers, "believes Vladimir Leonov.

However, not all customers are ready and have the opportunity to create and develop their own data center, with the exception of a dozen large state-owned companies, notes Dmitry Chindyaskin from I-Teco.

In this regard, most data centers are built focused on the sale of their hardware resources to a third party, and therefore the main requirements for such data centers are compliance with the key regulations for using software and providing information security to the customer leasing the resources, Dmitry Chindyaskin points out.

Thus, the key factors of competition are the requirements for ensuring the business processes of tenant customers and the economic component.

Oleg Kotelyukh summarizes the conversation about market transformations:

Advanced technologies are literally redrawing the data center market 5G : driving demand for edge computing, machine learning and/or ARVR requiring increasing bandwidth and scalability. In order to data centers keep up with the times, business leaders have to radically update the standards and approaches to organizing the data center infrastructure.

The key direction of this activity is to work on the concept of a peripheral data center.

"Peripheral data center": creating a conceptual basis

The most important structural change in the structure of modern data centers is the emergence of a class of peripheral (Edge) data centers. The specialized organization for standardization of the Uptime Institute data center in its study of global trends in the data center industry in 2020 placed peripheral data centers in the focus of the industry. Indeed, a full-scale paradigm shift is taking place in the data center segment - the principle of centralizing computing power ceases to meet growing requirements, and it should give way to a fundamentally new design on a new conceptual basis.

Analysts from Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence in their research of the global peripheral computing market, published in September 2018, predict that by 2023 this market will grow by almost 30% annually and will reach $4.6 billion by this time.

{{quote 'The topic of Edge Data Centers, Micro Data Centers, Modular and Container is being actively developed by several players due to the increase in Data Center projects at the edge of the network and the greater practice of using the Internet of Things. The emergence of new equipment, for example, the HPE Edgeline solution, for efficient operation outside the classical data center zone makes it possible to receive and process data at the network border, for example, directly at production, "emphasizes Andrey Selikhov from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. }}

According to Gartner, by 2025, 75% of the data generated by enterprises will be processed on the periphery. Oleg Kotelyukh confirms:

Data centers go to the periphery. This approach avoids delays in sending information from edge devices to and from the data center.

Through this, peripheral Data Centers help customers make faster and more informed management decisions. For example, instantly assess risks in the event of a breakdown of production equipment, or quickly analyze huge amounts of information collected at a specific point in the enterprise.

By using 5G, the connection density of endpoints will be increased, and a minimum delay of 1ms will be provided. These capabilities will allow developing such promising technologies as the Internet of Things, virtual reality, unmanned vehicles, machine learning.

At the same time, data processing should not be carried out in a centralized data center, as is customary now, but at the border of the operator's network, the expert emphasizes:

Imagine the situation with unmanned vehicles: suddenly there is an obstacle on the way, it is necessary to perform emergency braking. There is no time reserve for the data to "run" to the centralized data center for processing, and then the answer came from there.

That is why, Dmitry Chindyaskin is sure, the construction of modern data centers will be the prerogative of telecom companies and telecom operators providing services for the placement of information resources and services, as well as equipment of third-party companies. In the concept of peripheral computing on the infrastructure of the telecom operator of the consulting company Deloitte, we are talking about an architecture where computing processes are mainly carried out in microData Centers, which are as close as possible to the end user, but are actually located at the facilities of the telecommunications company, are managed by it and are owned by it.

According to global industry analysts, this year the revenue of the peripheral computing market through a telecom operator will reach $21 billion, which is 100% more than in 2019, and in 2021 the market may grow by more than 50%. True, Stanislav Mirin doubts the high rates of development of peripheral data centers in our country in the near future:

Now many people associate the development of Edge data centers with the deployment of 5G networks, which will provide high data transfer rates. But networks are just a data transfer tool, and the main question is in the generation and needs of data. I do not think that in a couple of years the infrastructure in Russia will change dramatically, and many new data sources will arise.

The analyst believes that the current situation with 70% of the data center racks, which are concentrated in Moscow, cannot be seriously refracted in the next few years.

Data Center Paradigm Shift Challenges

The world has just entered the Paradigme shift phase in the field of data center construction. Suppliers of technologies, products and hardware and software solutions are looking for answers to the current challenges that the industry presents to them at a new round of development.

In principle, the main challenges for the data center industry remain the same: effective capacity and performance management, planning and management of service availability and continuity, monitoring and analysis of data center metrics in real time, ensuring energy efficiency, automating infrastructure operation and using self-diagnostics and self-elimination mechanisms, as well as ensuring security and countering cyber threats, - notes Andrey Kosenko, senior consultant on business strategy, VMware.

This, perhaps, is the main difficulty of the present moment - the challenges permeate all the main aspects of the data center, and everywhere they require a revision of established approaches.

• Data center architecture. It is necessary to ensure the transition to a hierarchical IT infrastructure, within which the computing resources of the data center are partially distributed over the data center network. In these conditions, notes Artem Kuznetsov, head of the planning and economic service of ARBITEK (I-Teco Group of Companies), a technology for the rapid deployment of large capacities based on modular solutions is required to minimize the time for commissioning of capacities.

This technology requires excellent knowledge from the executors not only in terms of collecting initial permits (IRD), designing and coordinating developed design solutions in various instances, but also excellent knowledge of construction technology, commissioning, obtaining various certificates for the level of fault tolerance at various cycles of implementation of the facility, - says Artem Kuznetsov.

Moreover, all these works should be carried out simultaneously and in fact in parallel, without the possibility of making critical mistakes in any of the above areas.

• Data center reliability. Business dependence on the smooth operation of distributed IT systems increases many times over. Solutions are needed to ensure both the reliable operation of the entire data center system as a whole, as well as simple and economical means used on peripheral nodes.

According to Andrei Kosenko, the content of the key concepts for the data center BC (business continuity) and DR (disaster recovery) is changing:

The letter C (continuity) in this acronym ceased to be perceived as a certain constant, but rather transformed into a certain value, which is changing, - explains the VMware expert. - Many scenarios of business continuity and recovery from a failure provided for a certain local nature of the event, for example, the fall of one specific site and the relocation of services to a backup one. Figuratively speaking, everyone was preparing their plans for a "nuclear strike" at a specific point. And the pandemic showed that no one thought that this very point could be equal to the whole Earth, and the crisis situation would affect in one way or another all countries on all continents.

• Create fault-tolerant data center configurations. On the one hand, the emergence of additional remote data center resources makes it possible to create fault-tolerant solutions with two mirroring sites even for not the largest companies. In fact, this scheme is becoming a massive decision. On the other hand, business-critical applications and systems may end up in small data centers, which will require a review of the entire security system of corporate information systems.

According to Ilya Tsarev, architect of the Schneider Electric Data Center Solutions Development Center, a serious challenge is the formation of an established infrastructure for mini and micro data centers in Edge architecture.

What will eventually become mandatory for him, and what will be considered a rare option? For example, is it necessary to be able to be placed in outdoor conditions, burglary resistance, air conditioning at the cabinet level, etc. While the microData Center is a designer in which the solution is assembled for each specific Customer, Ilya Tsarev emphasizes.

• Engineering infrastructure. The need for simple data center solutions out of the box dictates the need for new experience - building server rooms in different climatic conditions and in different communication environments.

The current hotspot is associated with the completion of the "format war" and the final definition of the appearance of the engineering infrastructure for large and hyperscale data centers: the continuation of construction in the traditional format with 19 'racks and centralized uninterrupted power supply, or the victory of the OCP format, including the transition to distributed uninterrupted power supply at the rack level? - asks Ilya Tsarev.

• Data center telecommunications infrastructure. The technical characteristics of geographically distributed communication channels are becoming a critical limiting factor for supporting modern high-load corporate applications.
• Data center security. The new distributed data center architecture with low-cost peripheral elements requires new data protection systems: advanced and low-cost.
• Data center systems management. The distributed and hierarchical structure of the new generation of data centers dictates new requirements for the means of monitoring data centers and their automation.

Much more acute than before, there is a need for effective remote monitoring and infrastructure management of such facilities, including the development of the direction of predictive maintenance of engineering equipment, before an accident occurs, - emphasizes Ilya Tsarev.

In line with improving data center management systems, the experience of a pandemic will be useful, recalls Andrey Kosenko, senior consultant on VMware business strategy. The demand for IT solutions (video conferencing, cloud services, digital workspace platforms, etc.) that have grown many times during the pandemic, which allow companies to work remotely, requires the fastest scaling of data center infrastructure resources and more efficient use of personnel.

{{quote 'Of course, modern data centers do not require a large number of maintenance personnel at the site. But the mutually exclusive requirements for ensuring social distance and prohibiting a large number of employees from being indoors at the same time, on the one hand, as well as the need to quickly put new data center capacities into operation, on the other hand, require a rethink of approaches to automation and organization of operation processes, warns Andrei Kosenko. }}

In general, two large processes are currently characteristic, which, acting simultaneously, cause a high degree of uncertainty in which decisions have to be made when creating a data center on advanced principles.

Ilya Tsarev tells about the first:

Very large hyperscale data centers continue to be built, while attempts are being made to "grope" the format of a relatively small data center, which would successfully play the role of an intermediate regional link between the central data center and the Edge architecture - the so-called "Hedge" format ("Hyperscale + edge"). Against this background, a serious challenge for the manufacturer of equipment for data centers and the entire data center industry is the need to support a wide range of solutions at the advanced level: from a microData Center for 6 units to giant objects of thousands and tens of thousands of stands.

The second process is associated with the high complexity of upgrading existing data centers. Dmitry Chindyaskin, head of the technical directorate of I-Teco, generally calls the correct elaboration of the customer's data center development methodologies, as well as plans for the migration of software components to alternative equipment or the site the main "hot spot" of the current moment.

Often we are faced with situations where incorrect calculations of requirements for computer systems, storage systems, bandwidth of communication channels, choice of incorrect design, etc., lead to incorrect design of new data centers of customers. Moreover, such mistakes are made not only by the customer himself, but sometimes by less competent performers, - says Dmitry Chindyaskin. - We see the main "hot spot" to a greater extent in the field of correct design of both the data center itself and the data migration methodology, and not in the technological aspects of the equipment used.

Let's look further at how the methodologies for the development of the corporate data center today provide support for advanced methods and technologies throughout the range of challenges facing the data center industry today.

ICT infrastructure trends 2020: Huawei forecast

At the annual Huawei 2020 partner conference, Denis Serechenko, director of digital transformation at Huawei Enterprise in the Eurasia region, spoke about five trends that, in his opinion, will be key in the development of network and computing infrastructure in the coming year (read in a separate article).

2015-2016: Data Center Market Trends

Many modern technological trends find a "response" in the segment. data centers According to Anton Gruzdev, Deputy Technical Director of EMS Russia and CIS, this is primarily due to the youth of the commercial sphere, " DPC thanks to which it is possible to actively cultivate the most modern ideas, approaches and technologies on it."

As a rule, technologies are "run-in" in Western companies providing data center services, and only then appear in Russian business. Today, the industry pays special attention to solutions such as the Internet of Things, converged and software-managed infrastructures.

Yossi Ben Harosh, President and CEO of RiT Technologies, considers the Internet of Things to be one of the most promising technologies for the data center. IoT allows you to monitor in real time the state of all components and physical indicators of the system. Installation of sensors that detect temperature, humidity and other parameters important for uninterrupted operation of the equipment can significantly reduce the risk of accidents and downtime, and therefore the costs associated with repairs. According to personal statistics, Yossi Ben Harosh will introduce 95% of data center operators in the next two years.

Convergent solutions that will replace "traditional" data processing systems will become no less popular in the near future. Such solutions are based on combining into a single pool, pre-configured, memory, computing and network resources. This allows you to deploy the infrastructure for a new client not in a few months (as is happening now with "classic" data processing systems), but in a matter of days. According to IDC, by the end of 2016, global costs for the implementation of converged infrastructure will reach $17.8 billion. Over the past four years, this figure has grown by 74%.

However, Yossi Ben Harosh from RiT Technologies believes that modern companies providing data center services need to focus not even on converged, but on hyperconverged systems. The first and second technologies have a number of differences from each other. In a converged infrastructure, each component in a block can be used separately, in turn, in a hyperconverged, all components are integrated, since the environment is software-defined, that is, all key components are combined and controlled using a single software platform. However, before hyperconverged solutions become popular in data centers, converged solutions technology should first become widespread, believes Yossi Ben Harosh (RiT Technologies).

Completes the top three promising technologies for data center software-controlled infrastructure. Its essence lies in automating the configuration of hardware components. Eliminating "manual labor" in this process will reduce the number of errors when deploying the infrastructure, as well as increase the flexibility and speed of customer service. In addition, the availability of an accurate and real database of all infrastructure components and access to it in real time will allow you to quickly recover from system failures, even if the hardware at the physical level fails.

As for market trends, the optimization process should be noted here. Customers optimize their computing resources: if earlier the capacity was purchased with a small margin, now customers order only the required minimum.

Due to the optimization of capital expenditures, customers increasingly see equipment and virtual resource (IaaS) rentals as a more economical alternative to colocation, says Alexey Sevastyanov, First Deputy General Director of DataLine.

On the other hand, customers have growing requirements for suppliers. The data center service provider becomes a consultant to the customer to some extent.

On the part of customers, requirements for safety, professionalism, quality, data center certification, personnel professionalism, as well as for the recruitment of additional services are growing, - notes Ekaterina Kukanova, regional director of Linxdatacenter in St. Petersburg.

2014-2015: Data Center Market Trends

Upward trend

Mikhail Lukovnikov, Director of TrustInfo Data Center, among the main trends in the data center market over the past year, highlights the growth in the competencies of Russian providers, the emergence of new data centers, as well as the general increase in customer needs for data center services of the entire spectrum - from the placement and lease of equipment to the deployment of cloud infrastructures based on platforms provided by providers or in their own environment based on the capacities of a commercial data center.

Alexey Sevastyanov, First Deputy General Director of DataLine, notes that the past year was marked by increased competition in the commercial data center services market and the launch of several large projects. He added that due to the unfavorable economic situation, the demand for data center services has also changed: the attention of customers has moved from placing equipment (colocation) to renting physical and virtual resources. Those who initially used colocation seek to optimize the number of occupied stands.

"Customers have become more willing to perceive the cloud as an alternative to colocation for building an IT infrastructure, to better understand its capabilities for solving IT problems," he says. "The deterioration of the economic situation in the last two quarters of 2014 and the course of companies to optimize IT costs only contributed to an increase in interest in leasing virtual resources."

Market consolidation

Rostelecom highlights market consolidation and the formation of large market players as key trends in the commercial data center market, as well as the transition to integrated service provision. The latter involves a combination of both traditional equipment placement services and services for providing advanced secure network access to customer equipment, customer equipment support services, resource rental services and software (IaaS, PaaS).

Already, on the Russian market of commercial data centers (kData centers), a dozen of the largest players are noticeable, who in the future can draw smaller companies into their zone of influence. The situation is also aggravated by economic conditions in Russia, a sharp drop in the investment attractiveness of Russian business, which will make it difficult to build new areas for small service providers. In such conditions, it is large IT companies that will be most effective, this factor is discussed in more detail in the Economic Conditions subsection.

Law No. 242-FZ and its impact

Inoventica calls one of the main trends in the Russian data center services market an increase in demand in general for commercial data center services associated with the adoption of federal law No. ^[1], which obliges to process and store personal data of Russian citizens in the Russian Federation.

Recall that on July 21, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed Federal Law No. 242-FZ "On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation in Terms of Clarifying the Procedure for Processing Personal Data in Information and Telecommunication Networks" - the so-called law on the storage of personal data of Russians on the territory of the Russian Federation. Control and supervision over the processing of personal data is carried out by Roskomnadzor. The department will enter violators of the law in the Register of Violators of the Rights of Personal Data Subjects. Initially, the date of entry into force of this legal act was September 1, 2016, but then the deputies decided that the law should work from September 1, 2015.

As of April 2015, large foreign companies are launching or preparing to launch their own sites in Russia in order to meet new legal requirements. Back in 2014, Google began transferring servers to Russia. In April 2015, eBay and the Chinese trading platform AliExpress announced their readiness to store personal data of Russian users on Russian servers. In April, the media featured information about the readiness of a total of more than a hundred foreign companies to post data from Russians in local data centers.

We add that interest in the opening of data centers in Russia among large foreign IT suppliers arose even before the bill with amendments to the law on personal data: SAP, for example, planned to open a data center in Russia back in 2013. In 2014, it was opened. In December 2013, the company Microsoft planned to organize the provision of cloud service to Dynamics CRM local customers.

Economic hardship

Rostelecom believes that a drop in the national currency and an increase in interest rates on loans will inevitably slow down the pace of development of the commercial data center market and cause an increase in the cost of relevant services. The company associates this with the fact that the construction of a modern data center with increased reliability is a large investment project, and at the same time, in the structure of the costs of creating a new data center, the costs of purchasing imported equipment are significantly weighted, denominated in foreign currency.

Andrei Tishchenko, Deputy Director of the Computer Systems Department of CROC, on the contrary, believes that now there are no serious prerequisites for increasing the cost of services for commercial data centers: "there is enough free capacity on the market, especially since several large outsourcing data centers were commissioned last year," he says.

"In the future, if demand begins to exceed supply, and sites are built using equipment purchased at a new price, the cost of services, of course, will increase. To prevent this from happening, we are now, for example, studying the capabilities of Asian manufacturers of hardware and software systems and are considering other options that will allow us to keep prices, "Tishchenko notes

.

DataLine notes that many data center operators froze the cost of their services at the level of November last year, but at the same time the burden of foreign exchange costs for the purchase of equipment and engineering systems only increased following the dollar exchange rate.

Mikhail Lukovnikov from TrustInfo notes that for companies focused on the domestic market and settlements in rubles, the effect of significant exchange rate fluctuations was not very noticeable. It was felt more by companies that used the services of foreign providers (in Europe and the United States) or worked with "pegging" to foreign currencies. For these companies, a significant increase in the cost of services in ruble terms has become one of the factors that forced them to "turn" towards Russian providers, he notes.

Lukovnikov added that the increase in loan rates forced many organizations to reconsider their plans to invest in the construction of their own data centers and turn their face to the proposals of existing commercial data center operators.

Market players who cannot find investments to expand infrastructure will find themselves in a very difficult situation, and are likely to cede their share to large providers that can support an active influx of customers, said Leonid Anikin, head of cloud infrastructure at Softline's cloud technology department .

"Softline, for example, has doubled sales of cloud services over the year - this means that we had to buy equipment to create another of our cloud. At the same time, I know that some of our competitors were forced to freeze development, "he said

.

A similar point of view is held in Rostelecom: "It seems to us that in tougher economic conditions the market is waiting for consolidation, the emergence of several truly large players and a significant increase in the bar for entering the market."

Service Structure Change

In the kData Center market, the percentage of colocation services from 2014 onwards will gradually decline: according to various experts, from the current almost 70% to 50% in the next three years. But the segment of cloud services in cash will more than double: from 11% to 24%. At the same time, the share of network and telecommunications services will practically not change, this segment will occupy about a quarter of the market, as it is now. So on the face - a clear claudization of the kData Center services market.

Regarding the demand for cloud services in 2014, TrustInfo notes that IaaS is still a driver of the cloud market: "independent studies of almost all analytical companies speak about this, and this is confirmed by the structure of customer requests." The company also notes an increase in the share of PaaS - a trend that is just beginning to manifest itself.

According to Mikhail Lukovnikov from TrustInfo, in 2015 IaaS and SaaS will maintain their growth rates in 2014, and PaaS will gain pace, gradually gaining an increasingly significant market share.

Softline notes that the expected growth in PaaS's share has not yet occurred: customers are in demand either for exclusively computing power (IaaS) or for ready-made services (SaaS).

The fact that the most popular cloud service is still IaaS is also noted by Andrei Tishchenko from CROC. He notes that at the same time, the number of more complex projects associated with the customization of services using hybrid infrastructures is gradually increasing.

"Probably, the same trend will continue in 2015, as companies with great confidence began to treat the clouds and began to solve quite serious problems with their help: data backup and disaster recovery, acceleration of business processes due to rapid migration to external infrastructure," Tishchenko believes.

First Deputy General Director of DataLine Alexei Sevastyanov estimates that in quantitative terms, the cloud services segment as a whole continues to grow twice as fast (about 50%) as colocation (25%), since the low base effect has not yet been exhausted.

Rostelecom notes that in the context of a tough budget policy and cost reduction, an increasing number of enterprises are striving to move from a full in-house policy, when an enterprise or organization itself builds and maintains its entire IT infrastructure, to various types of outsourcing.

"At the same time, for both corporate and government organizations, it is the use of services under the IaaS, SaaS and PaaS models from external suppliers that can bring quite tangible savings. We believe that this segment of the market will develop at a faster pace in the coming years, "says a representative of Rostelecom.

In general, for the first quarter of 2015, a more active transfer to the cloud of the basic IT systems of the organization was noticeable: e-mail, systems based on 1C, SAP, and so on. One of the latest examples is the transfer of Transaero's SAP landscape to the SAP HANA platform based on the Russian SAP data center. Companies with great confidence began to treat the clouds and began to solve quite serious problems with their help: data backup and disaster management, acceleration of business processes due to rapid migration to external infrastructure.

In the same row, it is worth noting the expansion of the range of services provided by kData Centers: including the expansion of offer packages including IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, the launch of "virtual office," "virtual data center," backup, protection against DDoS attacks, and so on.

Import substitution

For the first quarter of 2015, it is obvious that the ideas of the Russian government about import substitution, announced at the peak of the wave of anti-Russian sanctions by Western countries, aroused interest from both service providers and their consumers.

Customers are actively testing Asian alternatives (server and network equipment) and are ready to seriously consider them for certain tasks. The main interest is from the public sector and companies with state participation. Among the landmark contracts is the Sberbank contract on direct supplies with Huawei as an alternative to American vendors. Huawei - server and DSS sales in Russia grew by 387% in 2014, one of the growth factors in the company is the exchange rate for import substitution.

Russian integrators are expanding partnerships with Asian suppliers. Several large Russian companies in 2014-2015. became partners of the largest Chinese server supplier - Inspur.

Another aspect of import substitution is a more active transition from foreign solutions to domestic products for data centers. Legislative initiatives also affected here: the provision of preferences to domestic software developers on public procurement. In particular, there is an increase in interest in alternative DBMSs to replace American ones: we can cite as an example a pilot project for migration to PostgreSQL at the Bank of Moscow, the experience can be extended to the entire VTB Group.

It is worth noting the growing interest in cloud platforms of Russian developers. An example is the distribution of the cloud platform Mirantis"" based on. The OpenStack company has expanded its partner network in Russia and the first projects have appeared. These are mainly banking companies, telecom and service providers.

See also

• TAdviser Overview: Commercial Data Centers
• Data Center (Data Center)
• Key Data Center-Based Services
• Colocation
• Russian Data Center Market
• Cloud services (Russian market)
• Russian IaaS market
• What is a "green" data center?
• Data Center Economy Measurement
• Container Data Centers
• Data Center Technologies: Solid State Drives (SSDs)
• Global Data Center Market
• Top Trends in the Global Data Center Market

Notes