Import substitution, as was said

Author: Ilya Stechkin

Why did we decide to talk about it?

Remember, in early April, we told you that OpenStack is an important part of the software import substitution project? So, we are pleased to announce that we were heard. And according to the results of the examination of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, the group of companies (as part of Parallels Research LLC, Mirantis IT, Jelastic, Acronis, STC ROSA LLC, Alt Linux) took the first place in the direction of cloud infrastructure and virtualization management tools (there were 6 applications submitted . Two of the consortium participants (STC ROSA LLC and Alt Linux) were recently mentioned on Habré in connection with OS Day in Innopolis .
The publication of the minutes of the expert committee meeting of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media caused great interest in the media . After reviewing the work of fellow journalists and readers' comments, we realized that there are two main issues:
Why are solutions based on open source code offered for money?
Is it possible to consider import-substituting projects implemented on the basis of foreign technologies and involving global companies?

Let's try to answer both. To begin, let's talk about open source in general and about OpenStack in particular.
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Open source - not cheese in a mousetrap

First of all, I would like to remind the proverb: only cheese in a mousetrap is free. You have to understand that big money is invested in open source. So, only the company HP planned in 2014-2015. to invest in the OpenStack ecosystem about $ 1 billion , which is significantly less than the amount that is planned to be spent on the ALL software import substitution program. At the same time, HP is not the only company investing in the development of this ecosystem. Mirantis, RedHat, IBM, Rackspace, Huawei ... This is not a complete list of interested parties , which you can find on the site Stackalytics (the open statistics service of the OpenStack ecosystem). Their money goes mainly to pay for the opportunity to determine the direction of technology development.
In turn, enterprise companies that decide to make their infrastructure based on OpenStack pay:
the work of professionals who collect the “cloud” of the desired configuration from the “details” provided by the ecosystem for free;
priority in the development of certain elements of the ecosystem necessary for the implementation of the project;
the efforts of the creators of the distribution, which, unlike the “vanilla” product (we have already told you that vanilla is called “pure” OpenStack in the form in which it is available to the entire community of developers and clients), is specially tested ( in our case - on real “hardware” surrounded by 200 knots).

At the same time, in addition to what the creators of proprietary solutions offer (in the case of the Russian market of platforms for virtualization and building cloud infrastructures, customers usually give an example of VMware), customers receive:
independence from the development company, which may, for some reason, stop supporting the product (not only because of sanctions, but, for example, because of the liquidation or change of the type of activity — the western market knows such examples),
independence from the hardware vendor, since OpenStack is not tied to any hardware vendor,
possibility of extremely flexible product customization.
In addition, proprietary solutions are not subject to komoditezatsii and can not be cheaper due to internal competition.
The difficult relationship between the corporate market and open source projects was recently discussed by Mirantis CEO German Narkaitis .

Knowledge and recognition

We now turn to the second question: about “foreign companies” and “foreign technologies”. The peculiarity of modern information and communication technologies is that they are global in nature. No matter how hard they try to drive the Internet into state borders, it still gets out. As for open source projects, they attract the attention of companies from Russia, China, India ... Developers from different countries invest their knowledge in the development of these projects. That's the value of open source. Although, in fairness it should be said that initiatives of this kind most often appear precisely in the States. Probably because it is easier to find initial funding.
If we talk about import substitution from the standpoint of safety and convenience, it is important that the main production facilities of the company participating in the project be concentrated in Russia and that all participants in the process freely communicate in Russian.
The knowledge necessary for the implementation of technically complex projects is spread all over the world, as well as the interests of global IT companies. They have to collect literally bit by bit. And sometimes “grow” on the spot. Mirantis implements both strategies: we are looking for talented people around the world (in Italy, USA, India, Japan, France, China ...), but at the same time we invest in Russian engineering education (we support the department at Saratov State University, for example). The absolute majority of our developers are in Moscow and Saratov (yes, and the Americans and Italians too).
Yes, we are a global company. And this is a sign of our success. We are a modern high-tech business, which means we are closely within the borders of one state.
But at the same time, Mirantis does not forget about its roots and actively creates jobs in Russia. In the end, for some reason, no one is embarrassed that the security of computers of the absolute majority of Russian users (including government employees) is provided by the global company Kaspersky Lab, with offices in Japan, Hong Kong, USA, Great Britain ... On the contrary, everyone is proud of it . Mirantis is another reason to be proud!