In addition to the Ministry of Digital Development, the Center for Competence in Import Substitution in the Sphere of Information and Communication Technologies (CIT) is responsible for implementing the plan for applied and system-wide software. Its head, Ilya Massukh, told RBC that, based on the results of the first nine months of this year, Russian software solutions account for at least 96% of the volume of government purchases in the main classes of system-wide software. In 2022, the figure was 45–90%, depending on the class of software.
Alexey Smirnov, CEO of Bazalt SPO, albania whatsapp resource believes that the changes were prompted by the upcoming requirements for owners of critical information infrastructure (this includes communication networks and information systems of government agencies, financial, energy, medical, telecommunications and a number of other companies; according to the presidential decree, they must switch to Russian software by 2025), as well as the fact that many companies began to assess the use of foreign software as an operational risk. Support measures for the IT industry, in particular preferences in procurement and tax breaks, also played a role, Smirnov noted.
However, an RBC source in the IT market insists that in reality the figures are lower: in 2022, the import substitution level for application software did not exceed 16%, and for general system software - 20%. This year, the figures could grow by 5-7%. "Office software and operating systems are encountering maximum resistance [from users]. At the same time, things are going well in information security, and things are getting better in ERP (enterprise resource planning systems - RBC)," the source said.
Alexander Cherny, an IT infrastructure architect at the Transformation Strategy practice at Reksoft Consulting, partly agrees with this: a sharp jump in the share of Russian office and system software can only occur in companies with some degree of state participation or that are owners of critical information infrastructure. "But on the scale of the entire Russian software market, it is too early to talk about high growth rates. There is a feeling that the figures in the draft "road map" are based on reports from government agencies," Cherny says. He noted that in companies that are not owners of critical information infrastructure and without state participation, the implementation of Russian software remains at a fairly low level, especially in the b2c segment.
According to the founder and producer of "Robbo" Pavel Frolov (developer of software and hardware for programming and robotics), about 10% of users currently work with domestic operating systems. "We are currently helping a number of large state corporations switch from Windows to [the operating system] Linux. Their main problem is related to application software. The lists of such products contain thousands of items. There are many tasks, and until they are completed, a number of departments of large state corporations cannot leave Windows," the expert said. In his opinion, a solution to this problem will have to wait for years until all niche software appears in desktop versions for Linux.
The CEO of New Cloud Technologies (brand "MyOffice") Pavel Kalyakin expects that in terms of the use of Russian products in the medium term, the IT market will grow by an average of 5% per year, and in certain segments - by 5-15%, but he did not assess the current level.