Vendor replacement for IT infrastructure (telecommunications): which import can be exchanged for another import

The disposition in the country is this: many large companies (first of all - banks and state corporations) are used to building infrastructure on well-known American brands. There are many reasons, but the main one is a systematic approach. This year, they all had to somehow change suppliers. Because it is relatively easy to bring iron past the sanctions on the “left” legal entity (albeit more expensive), but it is almost impossible to purchase a service for Kuzmich and Partners for iron in the data center of a large bank. And solutions without vendor support are not needed by the bank.

For companies that are not subject to sanctions, the story is different. There, the management lowered official memos like "to assess the possibility of building infrastructure on Chinese (Huawei, etc.) equipment." Because, in general, we need a plan just in case.
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Below I will show who and what can be changed, and briefly walk through the profits and pitfalls. For example, few people know that the cost of the same “Huawei” in some cases may be higher than that of the “Tsiski”.

Why import for import, but not for your own?

The priorities at the state level are clear: first, there are domestic developments, then - Open Source, then - everything else. About what kind of "green light" gave the topic Open Source, we will tell a little later, in the meantime, more about the hardware. Since in Russia its hardware for telecommunications is not so much (although, of course, progress is underway), the only currently working solution for large infrastructures is to replace either niche manufacturers who are not forced to execute sanctions regulations or switch to non-US suppliers . Read: to China.

Data networks

For a large infrastructure, one recipe is Huawei. Actually, in this area the last N years, he has been engaged in what we can, with some exaggeration, be called "cys-replacement". In essence, it functionally repeats the line on LAN, WAN, Wi-Fi, DWDM, servers, and Cisco and HP storage systems.

Pros:

• The line on the LAN-WAN-highways maximum (in comparison with other manufacturers) covers the line of Cisco. No one else has such a choice.
• In Russia, the experience of working with the Huawei is large: as a rule, in order not to fall into dependence on one supplier, the second and third are introduced in large infrastructures. The first large-scale implementations of Huawei in Russia were, as is known, the network of telecom operators. In this niche, Huawei quickly reached parity with Cisco. And there now the Chinese no longer need to prove anything to anyone. Everyone knows what to expect from them and how to work with them. Now it's up to Enterprise, where Cisco is dominant. However, most companies know that building a network on only one vendor, although convenient from a technical point of view, is quite risky. There are plenty of examples when the manufacturer tried to “twist the arms” to the customer using the monopoly position.
• At the cost of equipment ahead of the rest. However, the service often "bites." In general, on a 5-year plan, the cost is always lower than American colleagues. But maybe 2 times, and maybe 5% - it’s necessary to consider a lot of features. As a rule, the hardware is not much cheaper, the software is much cheaper, and the support is approximately at par.
• In general, the risks are lower than with unknown suppliers.

Minuses:

• This is China, which is used to be perceived as problematic in terms of quality and in terms of production. This is no longer the case, since all American brands are doing in China, but mistrust remains. What can interfere with the negotiations. According to the statistics of our service - no more breaks other suppliers.
• In the Enterpise-segment in the European market there is still not enough of these products. So - little information, insufficiently developed instructions, there are no large vendor forums and all understanding support.
• There is always some difficulty in integrating with an existing fleet (simply because it is a different supplier). Although it can not be called a disadvantage is Huawei. This is an inevitable evil when using different equipment in the same infrastructure. The question is solved by the level of competence of specialists.
• There is a language barrier, but in recent years, easier. English without question, there is Russian support, engineers in the Russian Federation are subjective, half are “relatives”, half are ours.

For networks with increased requirements for data transfer speed and application speed, there is Mellanox (Israel) as an alternative to Americans and Chinese, we wrote about the equipment of this vendor earlier .

In DWDM / CWDM we also tried T8 (development and production in Russia, components from Europe, USA, China, Russia). According to the test results, we believe that while this equipment is better to use only on trunk lines and only for the transmission of a certain type of traffic. Equipment T8 at the moment can not fully compete with market leaders (Cisco, Ciena, Huawei, etc.). Most likely, with the growth of the company's experience, the situation will change.

Wi-Fi. Eltex Company. Production in Novosibirsk, chips from the USA. There is no demand yet in the Russian Federation, basically, they are replaced by the above described Huawei or the niche Extreme Networks.

LAN switches can be viewed from Eltex, Qtech (China), Russian Telecommunications Corporation (Russia, Alcatel-Lucent under the Russian brand).

WAN -NSG routers (manufactured by Moscow and Moscow Region), RKSS.

Voice communication, CC, video conferencing

Here, too, everything is simple - there is Avaya and Cisco, we need cheaper and more.

Corporate telephone network (IP telephone exchanges, voice gateways, recording systems) - AGAT Group of Companies, a large set of telephone solutions for small and medium-sized offices.

Unified Communications - IToolLab (Russia) is a universal solution for UC, with wide functionality and high performance, has experience in implementing a large customer network, AudioCodes (Israel), a vendor with a worldwide reputation, reliable, modern solutions for UC.

Billing systems for telephone exchanges - Barsum (Russia), a large selection of billing products, the availability of all necessary certifications and licenses, prompt refinement of solutions to customer requirements.

Voice gateways, telephones, recording systems - AudioCodes, an Israeli company. With them, we have more than 50 projects to build VoIP-infrastructure for the Supreme Arbitration Court, collection agencies “National Recovery Service” and “SECONDARY CREDIT CONSOLIDATION”, TRUST and Renaissance Credit banks and many others. Tested, efficient and stable.

Contact centers

Contact center software solutions - NAUMEN (now we are implementing a project in a bank, in general - are good, covering much of what was decided by large foreign vendors).

There are also other products of Russian developers: Infratel, Forte IT, Aurus. With Aurus there is a successful collaboration experience. With infratel, Forte IT has not worked yet.

Contact center optimization (recording system, voice analytics system, voice synthesis and voice recognition system - Russian developer of Speech Technology Center, competitor of the Israeli company NICE and US Verint). We actively cooperate with these companies in terms of introducing contact centers. I can not tell the details, we are under the NDA.

Video conferencing, control systems - World vendors Harman AMX, Crestron. Niche Players: Iridium Mobile.

AMX and Crestron are recognized world leaders who only compete with each other. Yes, there are attempts in the world to do something similar. For example, the same American Extron, Australian CommandFusion, Czech CUE or even Russian iRidium. But none of them can offer a perfect automation system for controlling multimedia equipment in terms of the completeness of the equipment and / or the possibilities of flexible programming of controllers. And talking about corporate installations in relation to these vendors is generally impossible. We have no experience of cooperation with Extron, iRidium, etc., while the number of Crestron control systems sold is in the hundreds. I don’t know anything about Crestron’s Chinese counterparts, except that they seem to be:)

Equipment and software for video conferencing (replacement of Cisco, Polycom, Vidyo) - Huawei, Mind, TrueConf, IntegrIT (Russian developers).

Within the framework of import substitution, Huawei actually plays in a separate league, offering a complete solution for video conferencing and unified communications, not inferior to American manufacturers in terms of core functionality.

Mind is a young, aggressive Russian developer. Mind custom solutions do not require installation on a PC, providing convenient distribution. Currently, Mind videoconferencing software solutions are already being used by the largest Russian government and financial institutions.

TrueConf is a Russian developer who has already made a name for himself on the Russian market and started selling abroad. In his portfolio there are not only usual (for beginner developers) software (personal) solutions for videoconferencing, but also group video terminals for meeting rooms.

The Russian company IntegrIT successfully develops software for video terminals and video conferencing servers built on domestic Elbrus processors under control of Elbrus-certified OS and on x86 processors under control of special-purpose operating system AstraLinux, which, from a security point of view, can be very important for OPK enterprises, military and government organizations. We have not worked with them yet.

Contact center from the cloud. Contact-Center-as-a-Service - there is a niche Enghouse Interactive player (it's hard to say whose company: developers in Israel, European customers).

Enghouse Interactive solution can be deployed both on the traditional in-house infrastructure (in-house) and in the “cloud”, which reduces the cost of the project without reducing the functionality of the contact center. The platform architecture allows for customization of the on-demand contact center functionality, integration with IT services, which, in turn, provides flexibility and speed of response to changes in the client environment.

Situation and dispatch centers, meeting rooms and meeting rooms, Digital Signage systems, IP TV digital television systems, intelligent video surveillance - Barco, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Extron, Kramer, AMX, Crestron, Axis and many others.

This direction was not badly damaged due to the sanctions, because many vendors are Asian. Delivery problems do not happen, many companies have long ago set up production in the territory of the Russian Federation (Samsung has a plant on the border of Moscow and Kaluga, for example). Recently, however, we have seen some difficulties at the customs of companies with European / American production, even with those products that are not dual-use goods - inspections, rechecks. Deadlines are of course heavily, it must be borne in mind when planning projects.

References:

• Open Source - Myths, Legends, Concrete Decisions
• Another list of replacements of software on Open Source
• Vendor replacement page in the telecom area on our site
• My email for questions is AFrolov@croc.ru