Informatization of schools of Moscow

Computers at schools of Moscow

Traditionally, from 90th years, at the Moscow schools positions of the equipment of Apple were strong in spite of the fact that experts repeatedly paid attention to their unjustified high cost at comparable opportunities with cheaper PC.

Based on the tender which passed in December, 2010 in 180 schools of Moscow for 397 million rubles 6764 MacBook and 200 minidesktops of Mac Mini were purchased. In a number of tenders for equipment by the computer equipment of the Moscow schools under construction it was obviously registered that they need to deliver Mac computers (that contradicts the Federal Law).

Deliveries of computers of Apple on the majority of tenders performed the companies, related to the Lanit group.

The authorities of Moscow for the first time openly started talking about high cost of the equipment of Apple only after change of the capital mayor Yury Luzhkov at the end of 2010. "Moscow cannot go on the way of "omakbuchivaniye" of all schools at least because it will demand 3-4 billion rubles which we just do not have, - CNews at the end of 2010 the new head of the Moscow DIT Artem Yermolaev stated. - The computers conforming to requirements of the educational standard will be bought, but, with high confidence figure, it will be not poppies".

Computers and the office equipment for middle school and subject teachers

This delivery is intended for high schools and subject teachers, - explain in DIT. - Here we are not connected by certain requirements as in a case with elementary school, and progressively we update the computer park".

On August 11, 2011 it became known that the Moscow Department of Information Technology (DIT) held open auction on the next large delivery of computers and other equipment to the Moscow schools. The starting maximum price of an auction was 490 million rubles. The Tula company "Vektor group" which won the tender for supply of equipment reduced the price to 275.1 million rubles.

"Vector" will have to update the PC park in 300 offices of information science - to deliver 15 desktops and 19-inch monitors in each of them. It will be necessary to ship two monoblocks to teacher's 500 schools, and 10 thousand teachers from the same 500 schools - to issue on the notebook. Besides, delivery includes scanners, projectors, network switches, printers, and wireless access points.

The CEO of Vektor group Dmitry Klochkov told CNews that desktops, notebooks and monoblocks of Lenovo will be delivered in schools. "We have direct relations with this vendor", - he says.

Considerably companies, better known in IT market, also participated in an auction on delivery of computers to capital schools among others: assemblers of the PC Kraftway Depo, "Aquarius" (the request of the last was not considered), the system integrator "I-Teco" (was also not considered) and DPI — Projects company.

In total 8 requests participated in summing up. Explain how Vector managed to offer at an auction the price below other participants having own production of the PC, Dmitry Klochkov did not become, having called it "commercial information".

Addition: Under the law on state procurements 94-FZ consideration of the second parts of requests are made at the first five participants of an auction, i.e. taken at the prices places about the first on the fifth. For this reason requests "Akvariusa" and "I-Teco" are allowed to tender, but were not considered as not entered the five.

Notebooks for elementary school and their teachers

• Part of initial classes of schools of Moscow received the PC in 2010. In November, 2010 the corresponding auction on 401 million rubles with computers of Apple was won by Lanit company. The price was reduced slightly – up to 397 million rubles.

• On August 16, 2011 it became known that the Moscow Department of Information Technology (DIT) announced a tender with the starting price more than 1.44 billion rubles for delivery of the computer equipment in 1166 of capital schools. The winner of the tender will be defined on August 26.

It is about delivery of notebooks for classes of elementary school and their teachers. It is going to install computers in November, 2011.

"Requirements to the equipment are caused by Federal state educational standard of the primary general education", - note in IT department. This tender will allow to close completely the need for computers for initial classes at the Moscow schools, add to DIT.

The technical specifications of a current auction are technology neutral and do not mean a specific software platform, speak in DIT. Nevertheless, as one of interlocutors of CNews claims, preference nevertheless can be given in the tender to devices of Apple.

In terms of reference of an auction it is said that the main part of delivery (on 1.29 billion rubles) is 1166 notebooks for teachers (on one on each school), 17490 notebooks for pupils (on 15 pieces on each school) and 1166 servers.

Teacher's notebooks

The teacher's notebook ("uniform structural element weighing no more than 2.5 kg") should be equipped with the dual-core processor with clock rate not less than 2.5 GHz and a cache memory not less than 3 MB, the LED screen with diagonal not less than 13 inches, not less than 2 GB of RAM of DDR3 with a possibility of expansion to 4 GB which is built in by the hard drive not less than 320 GB, etc.

On the PC of teachers at least two operating systems "having different API" should be installed. The machine should be completed with columns, the microphone, software for training in the letter and reading and also software for work with audio, video, documents, video conferencing, record of disks, editing the HTML-code, etc. Besides, in requirements to software existence of a hypervisor appears (the program for start on the computer of several operating systems).

Notebooks of pupils of initial classes

Requirements to notebooks of pupils practically the same (similar positive limiting on weight, from below on the power of the processor, RAM and diagonal of the monitor), but the built-in winchester should be not less than 250 GB. Together in 15 such PCs in each school 2 figurative hard drives not less than on 500 GB, black-and-white laser and color jet printers, wireless access point, the cart on 30 notebooks, 5 graphics pads, columns should be delivered.

Software set on computers of pupils is similar to machines of teachers: 2 OS, graphic, text and musical editors, software for 3D - modeling, training in the letter and reading and also a hypervisor.

The second part of delivery (on 150 million rubles with superfluous) is 2521 more notebook for teachers (in each of schools it is delivered from 1 to 6 devices) a similar configuration.

Participants of the market of the PC comment on the announced tender reluctantly. The CEO of Aquarius (enters into NCC) Vladimir Shibanov told CNews that his company submitted the auction participation application. Acer reported that their equipment at an auction will be offered by the partner. Asus did not exclude that their computers can be also offered by partners.

• On August 26, 2011 it became known that the auction on delivery of computers for initial classes of the Moscow schools, as well as was supposed, came to the end with a victory of the supplier of the equipment of Apple, the DPI-Proyekty company entering into the Lanit group.

The starting maximum price of an auction was 1.44 billion rubles "DPI-Proyekty" reduced the contract price only for 22% - to 1.12 billion rubles.

For comparison we will remind that earlier Moscow department of information technologies (DIT) held an auction on delivery of the PC for classes of information science and teacher's rooms. The winner - the Vektor group company which offered computers of Lenovo - managed to reduce the starting price of an auction for 44% - from 490 million rubles to 275.1 million rubles.

The present tender became the second on delivery of computers to initial classes of the Moscow schools lately. Earlier, in November, 2010, also with computers of Apple won against Lanit, having reduced the starting price of an auction from 401 million rubles only to 397 million rubles.

Let's remind that at the end of June, 2011 Evgeny Dukhonin became one of Artem Yermolaev's deputies (is responsible for the financial and economic block), before since 1998 working in Lanita. It had no relation to the current tender, speak in DIT.

Earlier representatives of DIT said that the school auction is technology neutral. However in the specification on the software some requirements to which only software, written under MacOS and Windows can satisfy are detected.

For example, some requirements duplicate the description of the programs developed by the Moscow Institute of new technologies which is headed by the academician Alexey Semyonov. The Living Word is about software ". A clicker 5" (The universal educational environment for training in reading and the letter) and "Pervoly 3.0" (The integrated creative environment for elementary school). Versions of these programs exist only for Windows and MacOS.

Under the terms of an auction, computers for elementary grades should contain two OS. Suppliers of the PC not under a brand of Apple installed on the computers Windows and Linux whereas suppliers of Apple – MacOS and Windows. Thus, the impossibility to use some programs specified in terms of reference under Linux cut from the tender of the suppliers offering something except Mac.

The deputy CEO of ICL group of companies (ICL-KPO of AF, Aysiel - KPO of AF) Evgeny Stepanov told CNews that delivering computers in schools of Tatarstan said: "We knew about the Moscow auction, but did not begin to take in it part since on the platform other than Apple, it is difficult to implement technical requirements". At the same time, in the federal standard, according to him, there are no tough technology recommendations, and it does not limit the choice of the specific platform in any way.

"It was necessary to dispute auction conditions before its carrying out, without hoping for promises about the fast termination of "omakbuchivaniye", - one of interlocutors of CNews argues.

Despite predictable result of an auction, it nevertheless did not do without surprises. The Croc system integrator which was also intending to deliver computers of Apple in schools was the second participant of the final.

Let's remind that in Russia Apple has two official distributors – diHouse (also as well as "DPI-Proyekty" enters into Lanit) and Marvel Distribution (Marvel Group belongs). Croc, according to data of its official site, is not a partner of Apple.

Market participants assume that Croc could agree about deliveries with Marvel, but find it difficult to tell how in this case the company could compete at the price with Lanit. The CEO Croc Boris Bobrovnikov refused comments.

One more surprise was presented by the Russian computer collector of Aquarius who also directed to an auction the request with computers of Apple. "Earlier we participated with technology of in-house assembly, but then changed the solution, having understood that preference at an auction is given to Apple", - explained in the company.

In case of so large-scale purchases the partner channel works as follows, explain in Akvariusa: The supplier requests existence of the equipment from vendor and asks to provide the technical specification - what devices approach under requirements of the customer. In this case the specification was identical to all participants of an auction. Then the supplier selects the distributor and in case of a victory buys the equipment.

"For the prices we addressed both distributors - diHouse and Marvel, and stopped on the second since it gave lower prices", - the representative of Aquarius adds.

Despite the request with Apple, Aquarius was not allowed prior to the auction final. Together with it the final was not reached also by other largest Russian IT companies. Among them – Technoserv (No. 6 in CNews100), Depo Computers (the leading Russian PC maker) and I-Teco (No. 17 in CNews100).

Akvariusa, Technoserv and Depo Computers CNews said that their requests did not pass for the small formal reasons.

For example, not indication of exact validity period of a guarantee became a cause of failure to Technoserv which was going to deliver computers of Lenovo in schools, the representative of the company Ekaterina Andreyeva told CNews.

Technoserv and Aquarius wrote complaints to Federal Antimonopoly Service, requiring to recognize their discharge illegal and to hold an auction again. Depo notes that to complain it is useless, referring to the previous experience.