ZStack

The Chinese developer of virtualization and cloud computing technologies ZStack has been operating since 2015 and is well known in its native market as a developer of alternatives to Western platforms, primarily VMware. The headquarters of the company is located in Shanghai, it also has a "daughter" in Hong Kong, which plays the role of headquarters for the development of international business.

Strategic investors in ZStack include cloud service provider Alibaba Cloud and one of China's largest operators, China Telecom.

According to the ZStack presentation for customers from the financial sector, as of 2022, more than 40 companies in this area use the products of this vendor, including the Chinese payment system UnionPay and Bocom International, one of the largest financial institutions in China.

In addition to China, ZStack is developing business in several dozen countries. In the summer of 2022, the company entered the Indian market.

2022: Entering the Russian market

As TAdviser found out in September 2022, the Chinese developer of virtualization solutions ZStack plans in the near future to conclude service contracts with a number of individuals in Russia who will act as representatives of the vendor in the country. This was told by a source well acquainted with the company's plans.

One of the representatives will be Ivan Zasokhlin, who from 2018 until recently served as regional director of Commvault in Russia and the CIS.

ZStack is based in Shanghai and has more than 400 employees "(photo - Ivan Chong)"

According to a TAdviser source, ZStack first plans to work in Russia for some time in this way and, if the business develops successfully, expects to open its representative office in Russia in 2023.

A key product of ZStack is a virtualization platform that allows you to deploy private cloud infrastructures. It is based on ZStack's own open source product, which is available for download on GitHub and supports a KVM-based hypervisor. The Enterprise version that ZStack offers provides many more features than the public version.

A license is available that allows the software to function with the customer in a completely isolated mode, which does not require continuous tightening of updates, as well as a license for the service model - for an annual subscription. Licensing is carried out sequentially - depending on the number of processors, not cores.

The system has a built-in migration mechanism from VMware and virtualization software from other Western vendors and the ability to manage hybrid cloud environments is provided. One of the features - ZStack software supports not only Intel and AMD processors, but also Chinese processors based on various architectures.

The product can be deployed on the customer's own computing power. Also, ZStack software is supplied as part of a hardware and software complex from the vendor. According to TAdviser, in Russia the supply option with iron is not yet available, but as of September, work is underway to provide it. In addition, work is underway to establish cooperation with Russian server manufacturers, one of the partners of the Chinese vendor told TAdviser.

ZStack products (from vendor presentation)

In Russia, by September, ZStack's solutions included in their product offer such companies as Softline, Group of company Systematica (Systematics Group), Sissoft, National Innovation Center (NIC), Computer Business Systems (CBS) and a number of others.

According to a TAdviser source collaborating with ZStack, as of September, a number of Russian customers are testing and piloting the products of this vendor. First of all, solutions may be of interest to companies from the telecom and financial sector - those who are especially important for scalability, he says.

Softline believes that ZStack entered the Russian market, already being one of the leaders of Chinese virtualization platforms, and, importantly, entered a very favorable time for the start of sales - a time of increased demand for alternative solutions.

Asian, including Chinese manufacturers, began to develop local analogues of software products much earlier than Russian ones. Therefore, they had more time for their own development or adaptation and refinement of free software, including based on feedback from numerous Chinese customers operating these solutions in a productive environment, "says Alexander Klochkov, Head of Basic Infrastructure and Virtualization Systems at Softline. - At the moment, these solutions are quite mature not only in functional terms, but also in terms of work in industrial operation mode. For many Russian customers, this sounds quite convincing, especially for those who need to close the needs "here and now."

Vadim Mukhanov, head of the competence center for integrated IT infrastructure "Systematics," believes that the ZStack virtualization platform for a set of functionality is a fairly mature product comparable to the functionality of VMware vSphere. Taking into account restrictions on the functionality of Russian analogues, ZStack has good prospects in the Russian market, he believes.

The solution core uses Open Source components (KVM, Ceph). At the same time, management tools, integration of components with each other are the vendor's own development. Therefore, from the point of view of supporting and solving problems, ZStack depends less on the members of the Open Source community, - notes Vadim Mukhanov.

On the other hand, this approach carries disadvantages both in terms of the speed of product development and in terms of the spread of expertise on the market: the community of specialists and experts on ZStack still needs to be grown.

Also, do not forget about the risks of sanctions pressure on the vendor and his potential departure from the market - the vendor promotes its product on the international market, and there is a great risk of imposing restrictions on work in the Russian Federation.

The company is looking forward to large implementations of ZStack in Russia in order to verify the product according to the specified requirements, added Vadim Mukhanov.

As for my experience and the experience of colleagues, I can note that I have not met such Russian decisions before. Domestic solutions, as a rule, have a number of functional limitations, which does not allow them to fully replace Western products such as VMware. To our customers, we are ready to offer the ZStack virtualization platform for implementation as a replacement for VMware. This decision is not included in the register of Russian software, but there are currently no legislative restrictions for its implementation, the representative of Systematics added.

Alexander Sysoev, head of infrastructure solutions at CROC, believes that ZStack is a modern solution that closes a large number of customer requests and has a number of advantages: from a migration system with VMware to additional functionality, such as, for example, the ability to manage VMware installation through the ZStack interface.

Despite the set of convenient tools, there is a fundamentally important limitation on this decision - it is not included in the register of domestic software, which means it is not suitable for import-substituted IT infrastructures, and especially for CII. Also, this software has not yet been tested for compatibility with Russian products that customers use in information security, backup systems, etc., - said Alexander Sysoev.

The distributor of ZStack in Russia is Factor Group. The company told TAdviser that Factor Group has fully localized the solutions of this vendor and launched a partner program in the region, including training technical specialists and sales managers on the functionality of the ZStack product line. Victor Larin, executive director of the Factor Group, says that over the summer, more than 150 specialists from partners passed it.

Partners are actively deploying demo zones based on ZStack to improve their own practical competencies in using solutions and preparing for the organization of pilot zones for customers. To date, several partners have already invested in the purchase of their own permanent licenses in order to have permanent complexes for solving their internal problems, as well as demonstrating them to customers, "Viktor Larin told TAdviser.

According to him, the company had to break through the "wall" of skepticism about not so well-known solutions on the Russian market from the leaders of the Chinese IT industry, primarily at the level of engineering at the partners.

But when partners see that in the current difficult time for the IT industry there is interest and support from vendors, there is a competence/support center and a distributor in the region, solutions are not copied, and developed from scratch and operating in many large customers not only in China, but also beyond its borders, the solutions have already implemented support for the Russian language, then they are ready to join the cooperation, - added the executive director of the Factor Group.

In his opinion, a rather favorable situation is now developing for professional software developers from the Asian region, even taking into account the fact that there are developers of a similar class of solutions on the Russian IT market. The fact is that due to the sharp curtailment of business in Russia by Western vendors, primarily VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, Russian developers of virtualization solutions, like many others, faced a hyperquestion about their products. It is observed both from customers who need to replace software and from partners who have a product "hole" that they need to quickly fill with working solutions.

At the same time, in the current situation, Russian development manufacturers are more likely to work with customers directly due to the current specifics on the market, and as a result, their internal teams are loaded/overloaded with their own projects. And any testing/implementation involves involving the right engineering resource, which the developer manufacturer usually has limited. This resource has previously been valuable, but now it has become super-valuable, given the fact that a lot of functionality that customers need has to be "finished on the fly," and this, in most cases, can only be done by the internal development team, - explains Viktor Larin.

During field tests, the level of functionality in some Russian products actually turns out to be not the same as stated in marketing materials. And taking into account the fact that a number of Russian products were developed mainly for a certain customer segment, for example, the public sector, they will definitely need refinement in order to better meet the expectations of customers from the enterprise segment who are accustomed to the luxury functionality of VMware/Microsoft/Citrix solutions. And it will definitely take a substantial amount of time.

Therefore, we are confident that corporate customers will be interested in considering time-tested solutions from Chinese developers as a professional alternative to solutions from VMware/Microsoft/Citrix, "said Victor Larin.