The staff will have to be trained to work with the new program / Maxim Stulov / Vedomosti

The Ministry of Transport intends to migrate from imported software to domestic software, as follows from the department's purchases. The ministry is ready to pay 54.8 million rubles for the transfer of its systems to Russian developments.

The migration of 625 users is in question, the documentation says (according to the Ministry of Transport's own data, the department's staff numbered 583 employees at the beginning of last year). The workplaces are equipped with Microsoft Windows operating systems of various versions, Microsoft Office office suites, Microsoft Exchange mail, and the VMWare virtualization platform. By the end of 2018, the workplaces and servers should be running on the Alt Workstation and Alt Server operating systems developed by Bazalt SPO, on the MyOffice office software and mail service from New Cloud Technologies, and the R-Platform virtualization system, the Ministry of Transport's documentation says.

The state has long been concerned about the transfer of officials to domestic software. Since January 1, 2016, free purchases of programs for government agencies are limited by a special register of domestic programs maintained by the Ministry of Communications, and if a government agency needs to buy software not from the register, it must justify this purchase and indicate why it is not satisfied with the software from the register. In the procurement documentation, the Ministry of Transport indicates that it intends to migrate to products from the register.

According to the plan of the Ministry of Communications, by 2019, 80% of officials should switch to Russian software (office packages and operating systems). The ministry approved such recommendations in July. Government agencies will have to replace both already purchased software and planned software with domestic software, the document says. By the end of 2017, Russian office packages should appear at the workplaces of at least 50% of officials, and domestic operating systems – at least 30%.

The indicators are ambitious and it will not be easy to achieve them, Vedomosti's sources said. But now the number of requests is growing noticeably, as specific pilot projects show that Russian products meet customer requirements, explains Vladimir Rubanov, Managing Director of Rosplatform. Word of mouth works, he is sure. In most cases, only the basic functions of the product are used, therefore, given the lower cost, Russian products promise savings, says Dmitry Komissarov, CEO of New Cloud Technologies. Last year, the Moscow mayor's office announced its desire to replace the Microsoft mail service with a product from New Cloud Technologies. Although MyOffice claims full compliance with the functions, the experience of implementation in the mayor's office shows that there are technical nuances, Yulia Krzheshovskaya, Director of the Department for Work with Government Agencies at Technoserv, knows. In addition, the staff will have to be trained to work with the new program, she points out.

For Bazalt SPO, this is an average purchase; the company sells licenses for about 50,000 workstations annually, says its CEO Alexey Smirnov. There are few government customers among them. Last year, there were few government customers, but now they are studying import substitution, explains Smirnov. He points to the technical difficulties of software compatibility, firstly, with the government agencies’ own IT systems, and secondly, with external government systems. They were all developed to work with Windows products, and now the government sector is thinking about how to integrate domestic products into this infrastructure, explains Smirnov. Due to the larger client base of Western vendors, their technical support may be cheaper than that of their Russian colleagues, and because of this, perhaps, the infrastructure on Western software may be cheaper than domestic, says Vedomosti’s source in a large system integrator.

A Microsoft representative declined to comment. A representative of the Ministry of Transport did not respond to Vedomosti's request.

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