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2024/01/21 16:51:43

What did you remember 2023. Main results and trends. Opinions of key IT market players

2023 is coming to a close. Throughout it, the events of 2022 continued to influence the Russian economy, including the IT market, but without the "shock effect" that took place earlier. TAdviser spoke with representatives of more than 20 major IT market players to find out how they see the outgoing year for the industry.

Content

Shock import substitution and increased competition among Russian players

A number of experts interviewed by TAdviser indicate that in 2023 there is a noticeable transition to real import substitution and there is a shift in the import substitution paradigm to building technological sovereignty in the field of IT and information security. They call migration to domestic solutions the main trend of the outgoing year.

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Russia has shown in this regard a unique experience in the world, when we were disconnected from all systems, technologies, support for Western vendors, and all companies continued to work successfully. And now this is happening not just by inertia, but in many ways already based on new domestic technologies and products. The introduction of Russian developments is careful and thoughtful, companies are adapting them to their needs more and more, using the support of vendors; there are no "revolutions," says Anton Shmakov, technical director of Astra Group.
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The approach to import substitution in 2023 was more balanced and thoughtful

Almost all players have joined the process of replacing foreign IT solutions: some companies acquire software vendors to become leaders in the business software segment, others bring their own IT solutions to the market, launch the production of hardware base components and enter new niches, - says the Dmitry Kharitonov first deputy general director of the holding, "T1" general director of the group ("Innotech" part of the T1 holding).

In 2023, a more balanced and thoughtful approach to import substitution can be noted: companies are no longer so chaotic in switching to Russian services and began to build IT infrastructure with an eye to long-term goals, MTS Link notes. For many customers, the period of testing domestic software is already coming to an end, and they are starting to purchase and fully implement.

Many of the customers have already passed the stage of finding new solutions, conducted IT audits, decided on the choice of systems and launched migration projects, notes Yuri Vostrikov, general director of Lanit Omni (part of Lanit Group of Companies). The mass introduction of Russian products has become not only a significant challenge, but also a huge incentive for the development of all domestic developers.

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Therefore, this year we saw the emergence of new players in our market, including from banking ecosystems. Traditional Russian developers are increasingly focusing on the vendor business model and building partner networks. So competition in the market is increasing, - believes Yuri Vostrikov.
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More and more domestic manufacturers appear in the software and hardware segments, competition is growing. For example, there are more than 30 positions in the register of domestic virtualization software, and over 140 positions in communication software, says Victoria Bukhar, commercial director of Lanit-Integration (part of Lanit Group of Companies).

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Commercial companies began to smoothly change the IT vector to a domestic one. As a system integrator, we clearly feel this trend: we conduct pilot tests on Russian solutions, regardless of the legislative field, "said Victoria Bukhar.
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In the segment of office software, MyOffice and other Russian developers of such products account for about 16% of the market, although a year ago this parameter did not exceed 5%. This suggests that Russian companies are moving from formal to real import substitution of software, - notes Pavel Kalyakin, CEO of MyOffice.
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The problems of the beginning and mid-2022, for example, the need to provide service for foreign equipment and software, in 2023 faded into the background: large IT integrators have developed the necessary competencies and expertise and are successfully coping with these tasks, says Anton Pavlenko, director of the Directorate of Computing Complexes, Service and Outsourcing "Jet Infosystems."

The departure of Western vendors has freed up a niche and opened up many opportunities for new players, but other challenges have appeared, such as the transition to domestic equipment, the replacement of system and application software with Russian and/or open source solutions. Often this is accompanied by a change in the technology stack and architecture. We have to work on these tasks for more than one year, Anton Pavlenko believes.

His colleague Sergey Andronov, director of the network solutions center "Jet Infosystems," notes that the company observes a fairly large number of requests related to a seamless migration process. Basically, companies turn to developing a strategy and organizing the transition to Russian solutions.

The company Onlanta"" (Lanit Group of Companies) says that in 2023 the demand for integration and support of domestic software from new young vendors increased. The number of software developers is increasing, which, in turn, stimulates the demand for cloud services. PaaS It is important for developers to write high-quality and secure code quickly. The introduction of modern platforms significantly speeds up the release of new software versions, which is confirmed by Onlant customers.

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The direction of multi-vendor technical support of IT equipment is developing - Russian providers are actively taking the remaining foreign hardware and software from the business for service. Obsolete imported equipment is replaced by Russian manufacturers, - says Oleg Konovalov, director of innovative development at Onlanta.
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Today, the market is forming a tendency to build an integrated sovereign IT infrastructure based on sanctions-resistant Russian-made products that meet regulatory requirements. Customers have become more serious about choosing Russian operating systems: they not only study the functionality of products, but also analyze the degree of vendor independence in terms of development, notes Sergey Trandin, general director of BASEALT. It is the ability of the vendor to determine the directions of development of its software products that serves as a guarantee of their long life cycle and sanctions stability.

Another trend is large-scale migration projects of large IT infrastructures from import solutions to Russian ones. They must ensure seamless, fast, high-quality migration of IT infrastructure from foreign software products and infrastructure solutions. Therefore, software tools for smooth migration from import solutions to Russian ones are in great demand.

The increased number of pilots and migrations to domestic software also influenced the need for business in high-quality management and IT consulting, says Anton Chekhonin, general director of Norbit (part of the Lanit Group of Companies). Plus, Russian solutions for the most part are in the stage of development of functionality, ripening, so there is an increasing demand for additional development and configuration of integrations, as well as qualified specialists.

Another significant trend is the strengthening of the role in replacing the internal IT teams of leading Russian companies, including through active collaboration with vendors and technological leaders in thematic associations and industrial competence centers, believes Pavel Goryansky, general director of Consyst Business Group.

Vladimir Lvov, Director for Strategic Development of I-Teco Group of Companies, also speaks about strengthening the role of insourcing: "The role of insourcers is increasing and IT companies of a state and federal scale are developing. Large customers prefer to have insourced IT companies as part of their group. "

Korus Consulting notes that in general, the business began to move towards minimizing risks - strict accounting and competent distribution of resources, closing projects with a long payback cycle. Specific indicators come to the fore when deciding on the implementation.

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We see now the demand for precisely those products that can create measurable value for business. For example, supply chain modeling solutions that help companies save hundreds of millions of rubles a year by optimizing logistics processes, says Alexander Semenov, CEO of Korus Consulting.
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In the process of transformation related to the replacement of solutions from departed companies with Russian counterparts, Kaspersky Lab acts both as a vendor and as a customer. As a vendor, the company sees the dynamic growth and development of the Russian IT market, and the information security market, according to its estimates, is even more dynamic. And as a customer of Russian IT solutions, Kaspersky Lab states that there is noticeable progress in quality, but a number of problems are still present.

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The good news is that the market was able to adapt, pessimistic forecasts about the degradation of the IT infrastructure did not come true. The news is not so good that the IT industry still needs to work hard to fully cover all customer needs. If we talk about the Russian software market in the field of information security, then it has always been saturated with high-quality solutions, and the situation in it is better than in many others. Although, of course, there are not fully solved problems here either, for example, with high-performance NGFWs for large companies, among other things, says Andrei Efremov, director of business development at Kaspersky Lab.
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In his opinion, falling into the trap of import substitution remains an important risk for the market. If vendors focus only on the Russian market and do not even try to compete with international players, then they will lag behind advanced models, which means that customers will receive products and services of lower quality than are available on the world market. This is why Kaspersky Lab's strategy is the development of export sales, which requires the creation of world-class products.

The fact that in 2023 the market successfully adapted to the changed IT landscape, says Valentin Gubarev, Deputy General Director for Business Development "CROC." For example, a recent company study showed that the planning horizon for retailers has expanded from a few months to several years. The main priority, unlike last year, for 26% of them was the growth and expansion of the business. A similar situation is observed in other industries.

Now the transition to domestic software has become one of the priority issues not only for state, but also for most private companies. Most actively replaced are means of protection against cyber threats, operating systems, office packages, infrastructure solutions, DBMS.

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But it is important to note that the transition to domestic software will be long. Firstly, in Russia there is no whole list of specialized software that has yet to be developed. Secondly, there is a problem of integration between solutions, 65% of the companies we surveyed in the summer spoke about it, "says Valentin Gubarev. - The functionality of Russian solutions often does not reach foreign ones and even sometimes does not correspond to the declared one. But in general, the situation will gradually improve with the development of solutions and the emergence of experience in implementations. Some systems will not be replaced, but simply will be avenged over time. The main thing is that all market players: developers, integrators and companies, work together.
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Increasing Government Influence on the IT Market

source = Pavel Mikheev/Reuters
Market players note increased government influence on the IT market

The greatest influence on the Russian IT market is exerted by the active position of the state on the transition to domestic software, including the entire range of measures for the development of new industrial and system-wide software, grant support and preferential financing of projects for the development and implementation of Russian solutions, said Pavel Goryansky, general director of Consyst Business Group (part of the Lanit Group of Companies).

The growth of the state's influence on the IT market considers one of the trends of 2023 and Sergey Tabulin, Director of Products and Technologies, Axoft: state investments in the industry increased, the work of the government and the Ministry of Digital Development to support the IT sector intensified, in addition, there was a sharp increase in demand for IT and IB- products from state customers.

Consolidation of market players and the course towards ecosystem

Among the events that influenced the Russian IT market in 2023, some respondents named the consolidation processes and the consolidation of players. For example, Sergey Tabulin, Product and Technology Director, Axoft, notes the fact of a merger and acquisition in the Russian IT market, including due to lack of investment, the formation of ecosystems and "centers of attraction" of IT competencies in the format of holdings.

The formation of large Russian vendors and technological ecosystems looks like a natural step after the shocks of 2022, said Georgy Podbutsky, commercial director of SL Soft (Softline Group of Companies). Previously, domestic players occupied rather separate niches - for example, they created solutions that take into account the national specifics of legislation. But the market leaders determining the rules of the game were foreign global suppliers: they closed most of the IT landscape - the infrastructure layer, multi-service communications, DBMS, application systems, etc., solved client tasks turnkey, guaranteed compatibility of solutions and provided high-quality support.

After they leave, customers are faced with a situation in which they need to interact with a much larger number of developers, since corporate systems now have to be reassembled from many products and solutions. And this entails issues of their compatibility and subsequent development/refinement, which, in turn, requires significant financial investments and specialists who own the stack of Russian technologies.

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The solution to this situation is the formation of a pool of large vendors in the corporate software segment. Such players will be able to create and consistently implement a strategy for the development and compatibility of the technology stack, ensure the usual level of support and support for systems for corporate customers, as well as form the necessary business infrastructure, "Georgy Podbutsky believes.
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Russian IT market players are increasingly moving towards the ecosystem

Against the background of the departure of foreign ecosystems, Russian players not only continue to increase their own product line, moving away from the status of a monovendor. The move towards the ecosystem is also due to the growth of integration between development companies, when the products of some Russian players are customized and embedded in the product line of others.

For example, productivity software becomes part of ecosystems in the areas of telecom and fintech. In some cases, we can talk about the growth of partnerships between software vendors and equipment manufacturers, which was not so common before, notes Pavel Kalyakin, CEO of MyOffice.

MyOffice itself is one example of companies developing on an ecosystem basis. The company says that by working closely with customers and carefully analyzing their infrastructure, they saw that, as a rule, workplaces are equipped with dozens of programs, often incompatible with each other. This slows down the work of employees, increases the burden on technical specialists and complicates the implementation of new software.

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We took the first step towards solving this problem ourselves, creating an ecosystem of office software. Today we offer our customers 16 products for working with documents and communications. These are desktop, mobile and web applications, as well as server systems. This year we launched a new product on the corporate communications market - the Squadus digital workspace, - says Pavel Kalyakin, CEO of MyOffice.
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For example, the developer Astra Group, which now has one of the largest ecosystems in the IT market, including 17 own products and more than 2.5 thousand partner solutions, is on the same path.

ERP Large SAP Migration Projects

Many processes in organizations are tied to ERP systems, and their implementation and development in large companies, as a rule, is a resource-intensive and fast task, so migration to new solutions in this class of products can be distinguished as a separate trend.

In 2022, with the curtailment of SAP's business in Russia, many customers said that they were in no hurry to switch from the solutions of the German vendor, hoping that external support or their own competencies would be enough for the already implemented solutions to continue to function successfully for some time. Nevertheless, 2023 was marked by a number of major projects for migration from SAP and other imported ERP solutions to Russian solutions, where 1C remains the most significant player.

So, for example, the transition from SAP products to 1C in 2022-2023. began in the Moscow metro and in, ",,,,, MosgortransAeroflot "Petersburg Metro" Tele2 at the "Alrosé" automobile plant, (Moskvich "Northern Capital Air Gate" Pulkovo airport) and other large organizations.

In the most favorable situation here were those who have long built their landscape of business applications on domestic ERP solutions. For example, Sollers did not buy into "best practices," which since about 2005 used "1C" as the main platform, and created its own independent target IT landscape. And from large retailers, DNS can be cited as an example, whose co-owner and president of DNS Dmitry Alekseev previously explained why he would never buy SAP.

1C says that introducing their products to thousands of users has become commonplace

1C told TAdviser that in the 11 months of 2023, 1C: Enterprises sales grew by more than 44% by 11 months of 2022. Including at a faster pace, by 68%, sales of new jobs increased.

Among the main reasons for this growth in the company are the revival of the economy, the focus on development of small and large organizations. In addition, the deferred demand of 2022 worked, real, not in words, import substitution began.

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We were ready. Our investments in the scalability and cross-platform of our system have been justified. Implementations for thousands of users have become commonplace. "1C: Enterprise" can really be used on an equal basis/to replace well-known world systems, we continue to improve our programs and increase their functionality. And the 1C community has demonstrated to customers, the market its stability and stability of work, TAdviser said in 1C.
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Korus Consulting CEO Alexander Semenov also notes that the market retains a high demand for migration services to domestic ERPs. In his opinion, the demand for products built on the 1C platform will continue in 2024.

Jump in the construction of data centers

In 2023, Russian integrators noted an unprecedented increase in requests for the construction of data centers. 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 agreed that the deferred demand played a significant role here.

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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, a staggering demand, - noted then Sergey Paukov, director of the department of engineering and multimedia systems "CROC."
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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.

CROC saw an increase in the construction of data centers 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 "thawed." At the end of the year, CROC expects a doubling of this direction.

{{quote 'Demand for new sites and locations is growing both in the world and in Russia. If in recent years there has been a large shortage of free standing places on the market, then this year several large facilities were put into operation at once and there was a trend towards reducing this deficit. If now the main data centers are concentrated in Moscow, at the same time we are witnessing an expansion of the geography of construction, and in a couple of years we will see new powerful facilities in Siberia, the Far East and other regions, "says Valentin Gubarev, deputy general director for business development at CROC.

Sergey Andronov, director of the network solutions center "Jet Infosystems," also says that the company now sees great interest in the construction of new data centers.

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The shortage of standing places, which existed before that, only increased in 2023, and legislative initiatives requiring that resources and information flows be only on the territory of the Russian Federation could not but affect the requirements for the capacity of the data center, - notes Sergey Andronov.
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Deferred demand played a role in the growth of demand for the construction of data centers

However, Andrei Aksenov, general director of the data center provider IXcellerate, believes that in 2022 the deficit was more obvious, and this year, personally, the situation for him is less unequivocal. On the one hand, many claim to be building. The nominal number of sites has increased. If we collect all statements about construction projects from the market, it turns out that now, in Moscow, at least, there should be a strong surplus.

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At the same time, for large installations, we have been and are in a tender process with competitors all the time, and for us in this sense the situation has not changed much over the past 2-2.5 years: now, as before, we have one or two competitors for the project. At the same time, we see a strong shift in customers to high-load racks: a year ago, the installation would have been 8-10 kW per rack, and now the obvious requirement is 10-12 kW per rack. For such projects in Moscow, we do not see increased competition. There are still not many sites in Moscow that can offer 12-kilowatt installations for hosting IT infrastructures, [1] "Andrei Aksenov noted in an interview with TAdviser in December.
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Sergey Lysenko, the general director of Atomdat (controlled by Rosenergoatom, which is part of Rosatom State Corporation), in August pointed out that 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.

Shortage of personnel

The shortage of qualified IT personnel, which worsened in 2022, did not go anywhere in 2023. A number of market players surveyed by TAdviser noted this as one of the trends affecting the IT market.

The shortage of IT personnel is aggravated by the depletion of personnel resources due to the relocation of some specialists last year and an increase in the need for IT personnel amid an increase in the number of projects. A particularly difficult situation with experienced specialists of the senior and middle levels, so the way out can be to train personnel on their own, improve the qualifications of juniors, notes Dmitry Kharitonov, First Deputy General Director of T1 Holding, General Director of the Innotech group.

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A tangible shortage of such personnel slows down the process of forming technological independence, and, above all, in the most difficult areas, he believes.
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At the same time, the economy is systematically recovering: there is no decrease in IT spending, moreover, most likely, according to the results of 2023, a small market growth can be expected, Dmitry Kharitonov added.

Competition for IT specialists has reached its maximum, over the past year, salaries have grown almost 2 times, said Lev Matveev, chairman of the board of directors of SearchInform. A new IT salary race was affecting the industry in 2023.

The shortage of skilled personnel continued to affect the IT market in 2023

Earlier in 2023, against the background of an outflow of IT personnel from Russia, organizations of various profiles hiring IT personnel also noted a trend towards a decrease in the general level of expertise of employed IT specialists and a "blur" of expertise. While there are fewer highly qualified personnel, many new, young IT specialists have appeared on the market, as well as those who retrained as IT specialists.

Maria Sigaeva, director of educational programs and projects at Positive Technologies, director of the internal personnel agency PT Career Hub, then noted in a conversation with TAdviser that this is due to the lag of Russian educational programs from realities, and that some of the specialists left in 2022. Now the main competition between employers goes for competencies, for qualifications.

According to the observation of Maria Sigaeva, in terms of quality, the category of specialists of the average ("middle") level is noticeably "falling" down. There have always been few experts, and last year, in addition, people left, and this gap has not yet been filled by anyone. The specialists who are hired today by customers and many companies, calling them experts, five years ago would not have been considered experts and would not have asked for such money as now. They still do not have enough expertise, they are not supported from below by good, high-quality performers, who also have to work for some time on target tasks in order to create a base under them, the expert noted.

Distributor value growth

For the IT industry and for the distribution market in particular, sanctions restrictions continue to play a serious role. As a result, the restructuring of supply chains continues, transaction costs grow. In general, the entire IT market has been globally rebuilt.

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We have learned to work in a state of constant transformations, to quickly change market strategies. This affects the speed of business decision making and the ability to maintain the quality of services, regardless of turbulence. In addition, the departure of foreign companies has seriously affected the strengthening and development of its own services, - notes Olga Dorovskaya, vice president of OCS Distribution.
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OCS Distribution points out that against the background of growing interest in the products of domestic vendors, Russian manufacturers are beginning to realize the role and value of the distributor and come to the distribution model of promotion. This trend is especially noticeable in the software segment. Over the current year, OCS Distribution has signed more than 20 cooperation agreements with Russian software manufacturers.

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In the context of increasing demand, we exempt development companies from the tasks of promoting and supporting users, allowing them to concentrate on product development, "says Vice President Olga Dorovskaya.
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Another distributor, Axoft, also continued its successful growth in 2023, due to a strategic bet on domestic manufacturers, the development of technological expertise and the rejection of gray imports. The company has transformed into a technological hub for Russian vendors and partners in building digital sovereignty, says Sergey Tabulin, director of products and technologies at Axoft.

Focus on cybersecurity, growing interest in services

In 2023, Russia became the most attacked country, and this trend will certainly last in 2024, Sergei Tabulin believes:

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In 2023, we noted large-scale investments in information security by customers, the growth of information security vendors, the growth of competition in the information security market and the tightening of requirements for the protection of CII facilities.
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In the second quarter of 2023 , MTS RED, a cybersecurity company, recorded over 17 thousand cyberattacks, where 37% of attacks were directed to the IT sector.

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The resulting trend can be noted by the growth of the cybersecurity market - companies are trying to protect their business by introducing technological solutions against highly critical attacks. According to MTS RED, the volume of the Russian market for protection against DDoS attacks in 2022 amounted to 762 million rubles. We can already predict the growth of the cybersecurity market by about 60%, and up to 250% by 2025, "says Oksana Vorobyova, CEO of MTS Digital.
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At the same time, import substitution in itself led to the fact that investments in IT and information security began to be approached with a new look, demanding efficiency from them. In turn, these requirements for transparency and visible results from information security stimulated the dynamics of technology development, said Valentin Krokhin, director of product development at Solar Group. Thanks to this, Russia has become a competitive country even by world standards.

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We saw an increase in the importance of the role of cybersecurity in companies: it reached the highest level of all time. We can also note the growth of the segment of services in the field of cybersecurity and an increase in customer interest in cloud technologies, - says Valentin Krokhin.
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Developers of IT products are now working more in the direction of cybersecurity.

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The focus now is on cybersecurity. So that IT systems do not lie down, so that they are not hacked, so that there are no disasters, including customers who ensure the operation of critical infrastructure. For most sectors of the economy, the work of IT systems is vital. Astra Group works in this direction and strengthens the information security track, "says Anton Shmakov, technical director of Astra Group.
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Following the global trend, in Russia, more and more demand is observed for information security services

Lev Matveev, Chairman of the Board of Directors of SearchInform, emphasizes that the whole world is moving towards information security services, and this has a huge impact on the industry. In 2019, the company opened the direction of information security outsourcing in terms of protection against internal threats, becoming one of the first to offer such a service.

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In 2023, they saw another opportunity: in the Russian Federation there are more than 200 thousand SMEs that cannot provide themselves with protection on their own - there is no budget for a one-time purchase of software and equipment, there are no information security specialists. For them, the service model is the only way out. We realized that we did not cover such a volume on our own, so in June we launched an information security outsourcing franchise. I am sure that next year we, together with our partners, will change the market for protection against internal threats, says Lev Matveev.
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Against the background of a shortage of personnel in the IT industry and Kaspersky Lab, in order to help customers facing this problem in the information security sector, among other things, develops the direction of managed security Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response (MDR): this is essentially an opportunity to gain the benefits of a monitoring and operational response center (SOC, Security Operations Center), while not building it at home, explains Andrei Efremov, director of business development at Kaspersky Lab. Such a center in the current conditions is a key element of the integrated corporate information security system. In addition to helping customers build them, the company can also take over outsourcing security management.

"Boom" of AI application

Artificial intelligence as one of the trends of 2023 is spoken about by many players interviewed by TAdviser.

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The development of artificial intelligence has had an impact on the IT market. Companies more often use AI to develop and build processes, in monitoring and recommendation systems, - said Oleg Konovalov, director of innovative development at Onlanta.
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Also, for example, AI is able to facilitate the work of administrators and organizers of online events, for example, it can decipher conversations, compile summaries of meetings and correspondence. The market confirms interest: according to a recent study by TAdviser and MTS Link, 57% of representatives of large Russian companies would like to have automatic speech recognition and meeting logging tools at their disposal. In the near future, we will see more such solutions, the company believes.

Russian companies are increasingly moving towards developing products and services using AI technologies. For example, in July 2023, MTS introduced its own generative network Software 2.0, which reduces the time for developing software code. In addition, MTS develops this track using the MTS AI artificial intelligence competence center, which creates solutions in the fields of computer vision, natural language processing, boundary computing, voice assistants, and so on.

Some companies expect to solve the issue of personnel shortages using AI. So, for example, in September, Kirill Menshov, Senior Vice President for IT at Rostelecom, said that due to a personnel shortage in the industry, the company plans to reimburse some of the missing IT specialists with technologies: "We need automation of the work of developers using artificial intelligence, which will reduce the need for the number of personnel, we are actively going into this. This must be done now in order to get the result in two or three years. "

Russian companies are increasingly moving towards developing products and services using AI technologies

In the first half of 2023, the Russian IT market was seized by a wave of application of a new generative AI, says Pavel Kalyakin, CEO of MyOffice. At the same time, a qualitatively stronger GPT-4 model also appeared in March, ChatGPT capable of writing valid code in many languages ​ ​ and very effectively integrating into automation scripts.

Also, since March, in the field of AI, more and more high-quality Open Source models have begun to appear that support, including the Russian language. At the same time, the key Russian vendors - Sber and Yandex - have already released two generations of their AI solutions, which are comparable to open models functionally, but significantly exceed them in the quality of the Russian language.

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In general, Russian companies are just beginning to test the practical use of new generative large language models, we expect a significant acceleration of this trend in 2024 and subsequent years, when information on the practical value of using AI in organizations will become more widespread, says Pavel Kalyakin.
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It should be noted that against the background of active import substitution for many Russian IT companies, 2023 was successful in terms of business growth, and the players interviewed by TAdviser also talk about it. For exactly how the year ends for their business and what expectations they have for 2024, read TAdviser articles:

Life after the "shock effect." Russian IT vendors note revenue growth, but more restrained than in 2022

What to expect from 2024? Opinions of key players in the Russian IT market