Rostelecom buys Microsoft software for 1.26 billion rubles

Rostelecom announced the purchase of 133,600 licenses for Microsoft products from its supplier, Comparex. According to the results of the 2013 tender, Kompareks became the only supplier of software licenses from Microsoft for the state operator, Vedomosti reports . Rostelecom plans to spend during the purchase of 1.26 billion rubles.

The company plans to purchase perpetual licenses for WinPro 8, Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, Microsoft Project Server, Lync Server 2013 Plus CAL (MS corporate messenger) and other software. If the transaction takes place, it will become one of the largest purchases of software in the public sector.

It should be noted that Kompareks already supplied licenses for Microsoft software for Rostelecom in 2013 (then 1.8 billion rubles were spent on software), but they expired just over a month ago, at the end of November.
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From January 1, 2016, legislation restricts the purchase of foreign software, forcing companies to give preference to domestic counterparts. The purchase of foreign software is possible only if there are no acceptable analogues in the Unified Register of Russian programs for electronic computers and databases of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media.

At the same time, the actions of Rostelecom do not conditionally contradict the law. The state operator does not purchase new licenses, but, in fact, extends the ones previously acquired in 2013. At the same time, a company representative points out that the licenses are perpetual, and this gives the company time to “think about switching to Russian equivalents”.

Practically for all the positions for which Rostelecom conducts the purchase, there are both Russian and completely free counterparts. For example, the My Office software package, produced by the New Cloud Technologies company, which Rostelecom itself is distributing. One of the reasons for choosing in favor of Microsoft products is the cumbersome structure of the state operator and the painfulness of the abrupt transition to another software maker.