Bypassing the law: the rental of cloud services is not subject to restrictions on public procurement of foreign software
The law obliging state agencies to submit a written argument for the purchase of foreign software from January 1, 2016 was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of June.
From January 1, 2016, the state customer will have to argue his choice in favor of foreign software, if his Russian counterparts in a specially created registry of domestic software. The law will affect only state bodies.
The software should belong to the state, the municipality, a Russian non-profit organization or company with a share of Russian beneficiaries of more than 50% - this is the main criterion that makes it possible to consider software as domestic.
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But it turned out that the law does not apply to cloud services, which also use, for the most part, foreign software.
Any government agency may not buy a license for software, but simply rent its functionality for a while. Rostelecom , for example, offers its corporate clients a cloud office based on Microsoft products. The representative of Rostelecom, Irina Zhabrova, explained that Rostelecom is concluding an agreement with customers not about licensing software, but about providing services. There are already a lot of state structures among the customers of the company.
The same contract with customers (although there is no government among them) is concluded by the IT integrator “Krok” , its spokesman Alexander Krishtop said. According to the information on the Rostelecom website, for one user of the Microsoft Office application costs 16 rubles per day, and corporate mail costs from 6 rubles per day.
According to IDC estimates, the Russian cloud services market in 2014 grew to $ 336 million, which is 38% more than those earned by cloud service providers in 2013. The largest providers of cloud services in the Russian market IDC calls Microsoft, Salesforce and IBM. The demand for cloud services in Russia is growing, as customers seek to save money and not create an IT infrastructure with their own funds.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media confirmed to Vedomosti that the restrictions on the admission of foreign software to public procurement do not yet apply to cloud services, but the ministry has plans to expand the mechanism. Until mid-February, the ministry should offer the Ministry of Finance measures to regulate the procurement of such services. And the Ministry of Finance will have three months to amend the rules of public procurement.
Access to software in the cloud can be sold not as a service, but as a license, said Yevgenia Vasilenko, executive director of the Otechestvenny Soft software development association.
Taking advantage of the fact that the law does not yet apply to the clouds, Microsoft agreed with six IT companies to offer cloud solutions to Russian customers in January. SAP started providing cloud services to customers in December 2014, and for this purpose opened a data center in Moscow.
“Federal authorities spend on IT services, software licenses are approximately 80 billion rubles annually. With the money of Russian taxpayers should be purchased domestic products. In the future, this practice should be extended to state-owned companies that have even larger IT budgets, ”said Nikolai Nikiforov, Communications Minister, on Tuesday at the Internet Economy forum.
On Tuesday, it also became known that Vladimir Putin supported the proposal of the IT industry to limit government purchases of foreign software not only to government agencies, but also to state-owned companies.
The idea of ​​limiting all types of state purchases of foreign software was discussed, even when the initial version of the law was being prepared, but then it was decided to start with the departments, says one of the developers of the law, State Duma Information Policy Committee Chairman Leonid Levin.
What procurement restriction measures can be applied to state-owned companies, he is not supposed to assume, but he is sure: since the president approved the idea, the experts will work it out. From communication with Russian software producers, Levin concludes that they have already begun to feel the economic effect of the new law.
From January 1, 2016, the state customer will have to argue his choice in favor of foreign software, if his Russian counterparts in a specially created registry of domestic software. The law will affect only state bodies.
The software should belong to the state, the municipality, a Russian non-profit organization or company with a share of Russian beneficiaries of more than 50% - this is the main criterion that makes it possible to consider software as domestic.
')
But it turned out that the law does not apply to cloud services, which also use, for the most part, foreign software.
Any government agency may not buy a license for software, but simply rent its functionality for a while. Rostelecom , for example, offers its corporate clients a cloud office based on Microsoft products. The representative of Rostelecom, Irina Zhabrova, explained that Rostelecom is concluding an agreement with customers not about licensing software, but about providing services. There are already a lot of state structures among the customers of the company.
The same contract with customers (although there is no government among them) is concluded by the IT integrator “Krok” , its spokesman Alexander Krishtop said. According to the information on the Rostelecom website, for one user of the Microsoft Office application costs 16 rubles per day, and corporate mail costs from 6 rubles per day.
According to IDC estimates, the Russian cloud services market in 2014 grew to $ 336 million, which is 38% more than those earned by cloud service providers in 2013. The largest providers of cloud services in the Russian market IDC calls Microsoft, Salesforce and IBM. The demand for cloud services in Russia is growing, as customers seek to save money and not create an IT infrastructure with their own funds.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media confirmed to Vedomosti that the restrictions on the admission of foreign software to public procurement do not yet apply to cloud services, but the ministry has plans to expand the mechanism. Until mid-February, the ministry should offer the Ministry of Finance measures to regulate the procurement of such services. And the Ministry of Finance will have three months to amend the rules of public procurement.
Access to software in the cloud can be sold not as a service, but as a license, said Yevgenia Vasilenko, executive director of the Otechestvenny Soft software development association.
Taking advantage of the fact that the law does not yet apply to the clouds, Microsoft agreed with six IT companies to offer cloud solutions to Russian customers in January. SAP started providing cloud services to customers in December 2014, and for this purpose opened a data center in Moscow.
“Federal authorities spend on IT services, software licenses are approximately 80 billion rubles annually. With the money of Russian taxpayers should be purchased domestic products. In the future, this practice should be extended to state-owned companies that have even larger IT budgets, ”said Nikolai Nikiforov, Communications Minister, on Tuesday at the Internet Economy forum.
On Tuesday, it also became known that Vladimir Putin supported the proposal of the IT industry to limit government purchases of foreign software not only to government agencies, but also to state-owned companies.
The idea of ​​limiting all types of state purchases of foreign software was discussed, even when the initial version of the law was being prepared, but then it was decided to start with the departments, says one of the developers of the law, State Duma Information Policy Committee Chairman Leonid Levin.
What procurement restriction measures can be applied to state-owned companies, he is not supposed to assume, but he is sure: since the president approved the idea, the experts will work it out. From communication with Russian software producers, Levin concludes that they have already begun to feel the economic effect of the new law.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/297538/
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