Red Hat Russia and CIS

2025: Satisfaction of Transneft's claim to recover 12.8 million rubles in losses

On January 28, 2025, it became known that Transneft had sued 12.8 million rubles from Red Hat. The corresponding decision was made by the Moscow Arbitration Court.

The claim is fully satisfied, - said in the court decision regarding the claim of Transneft against the American software manufacturer (quoted by TASS).

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Фото: Freepik

Transneft demanded to recover losses from a foreign company. The defendants in the lawsuit were Red Hat Ltd. and Red Hat Inc.

Earlier, Transneft filed claims for 83.1 million rubles against IBM, r Citrix for 17.1 million rubles, as well as three claims for a total of 62 million rubles against Cisco.

Details of the trial of Transneft and Red Hat were not disclosed by the end of January 2025. The lawsuit against IBM sought to recover damages in the amount of prepaid software technical support services, which the defendant terminated in March 2022.

According to RIA Novosti, the Russian company acquired software technical support certificates through IBM resellers and distributors, paid for these certificates, activated them on the IBM website, and accepted all license agreements

However, technical support for prepaid software, which IBM itself provided, was unilaterally terminated in March 2022, in connection with which Transneft suffered losses in the amount of prepaid technical support services, - said the representative of the plaintiff, whose words are quoted by the agency.[1]

2024: Transneft files multimillion-dollar lawsuits against Cisco, Red Hat and IBM

In early September 2024, Transneft filed lawsuits against several American technology companies with the Moscow Arbitration Court. Among the defendants, in particular, are Cisco, Red Hat and IBM, and the proceedings themselves are related to economic disputes in civil legal relations. Read more here

2022: Termination of work with organizations from Russia and Belarus

Red Hat has decided to break off its partnership with all companies located or headquartered in Russia or Belarus. This became known on March 8, 2022. The company also stops selling its products and providing services in Russia and Belarus. As for employees in Russia and Ukraine, Red Hat expressed its readiness to provide them with assistance and all necessary resources^[2].

2017: New Regional Manager in Russia - Maxim Semenikhin

In January 2017, Red Hat announced the appointment of Maxim Semenikhin as regional manager in Russia and the CIS. His predecessor, Sergei Bugrin, moved to a new job - to ITSirius as deputy general director for development.

2014: Sanctions over the crisis in Ukraine. Letter to partners

In July 2014, CNews had at its disposal a letter sent from the Russian representative office of Red Hat to its domestic partners in May 2014. In this letter (the text of the original in PDF) signed by Phil Andrews, vice president of Red Hat in Northern and Eastern Europe, the company orders its partners to suspend projects with their Russian customers in connection with the imposition of sanctions^[3]

Phil Andrews explains the suspension of projects with part of Russian companies in his letter of May 20, 2014 by the president's publication USA of orders No. 13660, 13661 and 13662. In these documents, issued between March 6 and March 20, 2014, Americans and American companies are prohibited from participating in transactions with persons involved in the events on. To Ukraine The list of these persons is determined by the US Treasury.

The exact list of recipients of the letter is not known, but Red Hat names on its website Russian partners (in order of mention) the companies I-Teco, Inventa, Jet Infosystems, IT Sirius, Mezon.RU (Linux Center), R-Style and Technoserv.

2013: Business growth in Russia - 55%

At the end of 2013, Red Hat's revenue in Russia increased by 55%, the company's business development director in Russia and the CIS told TAdviser. Sergey Bugrin According to him, the 80% growth target originally set was an ambitious plan. The indicator achieved is the best in the region, which includes the countries of Scandinavia, Great Britain and Eastern, Europe he adds.

Speaking about what has become the main drivers of Red Hat business growth in Russia, Bugrin noted that the past year was the first year of operation when the local sales channel was rebuilt in a completely new way. At the end of 2012, the company changed its distributor - instead of the NCPR ("National Center for Support and Development"), Axoft became it, and in 2014 this status was assigned to another company - Mont. They provided good support to large system integrators implementing Red Hat products, says Sergey Bugrin. In total, as of the beginning of 2014, Red Hat has more than a hundred partners in Russia.

In addition, the company has expanded its Russian office - it now employs nine people instead of three earlier. Sergey Bugrin notes that his company is increasing both its technical competence in Russia and its sales direction.

In 2013, Red Hat expanded its portfolio of products offered in Russia.

The bulk of the turnover in 2013, as before, fell on the flagship product Red Hat Enterprise Linux. At the same time, the portfolio of products offered in Russia has expanded. The company began selling cloud solutions, including Open Stack as an additional tool for virtualization. Among the new products in this area is CloudForms for cloud infrastructure management. Red Hat Business Development Director in Russia and the CIS notes that the company is observing the demand for such solutions and the emergence of the first projects.

For 2014, the company set the task of promoting its intermediate ON - a family of solutions, JBoss says Sergey Bugrin. To do this, Red Hat both teaches partners in these solutions and develops its own competence. In addition, the company is developing the direction of solutions in the field. data storage

"In the near future, we expect an increase in sales of our Linux distribution in Russia, but we position ourselves not only as a developer of just such software, and also rely on expanding the line of other products, in the field of clouds and virtualization, in particular," said TAdviser Regional Director Red Hat in Russia.

At the end of 2014, the company expects "double-digit growth rates" in Russia, says Sergey Bugrin. What impact the political and economic situation that has developed in 2014 has on the company's local business, he preferred not to comment, noting only that, despite these circumstances, the number of projects at Red Hat in Russia is growing.

would say that our decisions have even begun to be considered more often than a year ago. Customers began to save more actively. The model according to which we work is a support fee, payment for licenses is not provided. Therefore, our solutions cost the customer less than the products of many other vendors. In addition, customers began to pay more attention to Open Source solutions as part of the increased interest in the topic of import substitution, "he says.

Speaking about competition in Russia, Bugrin notes that, on the one hand, it is made up of international distributions, for example, Suse Linux, and on the other hand, "clones" of Red Hat products produced by local companies.

2012: Development Strategy in Russia

At the end of 2012, Red Hat's revenue in Russia amounted to about $3 million, a source well aware of the activities of the local representative office of the company told TAdviser on March 29, 2013. According to him, in 2013, the representative office was tasked with increasing this figure by 80%.

The main source of income for a company in Russia is support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions by paid subscription, which includes technical support, receiving updates, etc. It is worth noting that the Russian representative office of Red Hat, opened in 2011, does not conduct commercial activities: it is carried out through a legal entity of the company registered in Ireland.

The TAdviser source explains such modest financial indicators in Russia for 2012 by the standards of the software market by several factors. Red Hat solutions are "significantly cheaper than similar products from large vendors like Oracle," he says, so "even with the same number of projects, the difference in revenue from them will differ tenfold." Other factors include the small staff of the Russian representative office of Red Hat (at the beginning of 2013 it totaled only three people), as well as the lack of serious activities to promote Red Hat products on the Russian market.

lack of awareness of many customers in Russia about what constitutes a SPO can also be called a deterrent ," adds the TAdviser interlocutor. "Many companies see the absence of programmers specializing in such software in their staff as an obstacle to its use."

A representative of one of the major software developers with whom TAdviser talked believes that it would be difficult to get significant revenue on a commercial subscription to OS distributions in Russia alone: "The practice of such a subscription is not widespread in our country, with completely free versions of commercial products, and in the case of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, this - its rebuilding of CentOS and Scientific Linux - the user will prefer to use the latter."

Red Hat expects to increase business turnover in Russia in 2013 by promoting a wider range of commercial products on the market, including virtualizations Red Hat Enterprise Linux Virtualization an intermediate-level platform for and software. JBoss In addition, Red Hat expects to significantly increase its marketing activity in Russia and strengthen work with partners, says a TAdviser source.

In connection with the above plans, Red Hat in 2012 replaced an exclusive local distributor, with whom it worked for many years. Since 2004, it has been a company NCPR (the "National Center for Support and Development"), and at the end of 2012 Red Hat transferred this status to the company. Axoft

In cooperation with the NCPR, sufficient generation of user requests for Red Hat products in Russia was not provided, the TAdviser source said: "The company was able to develop the market to a certain extent, but was unable to build a normal partner network."

As of March 2013, Red Hat continues to cooperate with the NCPR, but already in the status of an ordinary partner, adds the interlocutor of TAdviser. The NCPR itself at the time of publication of the material did not comment on the loss of the exclusive distribution status of Red Hat.

Until 2013, the company calls its largest projects in Russia the transfer HP-UX OS from a trading platform (MICEX 50 high-end servers) to its OS HP Superdome , which ended in 2012, as well as MTS the migration of large IT systems from servers to Oracle SPARC servers x86-based architecture based on Red Hat Enterprise Server 5. About the last project in early March 2013 TAdviser from became known the operator himself.

According to the same TAdviser source, who is well acquainted with the activities of Red Hat, the company has a number of projects in Russia at the beginning of 2013. The main bet, according to him, Red Hat makes on customers among financial organizations, telecom companies, as well as in the public sector.

2011: Opening of a representative office, head - Sergey Bugrin

In early August 2011, Red Hat, the developer of the Linux distribution of the same name, opened a Russian representative office. It was headed by Bugrin Sergey, who previously held the position of Director, Large projects at IBM EE/A in the Russian IBM. A record of this appeared on his page on the professional social network LinkedIn.

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