FAS did not find any violations in the purchase by Rostelecom of software licenses from Microsoft

The Federal Antimonopoly Service did not detect violations during the conduct of Rostelecom’s purchase of licenses for Microsoft’s software, RBC reports .

At the end of December 2016, the state-owned company Rostelecom announced a tender for the purchase of licenses for Microsoft software, including the license for Windows OS and office software of the MIcrosoft Office package. The tender amount of 1.26 billion rubles, as well as the fact of its holding, raised questions from the regulatory authorities.

FAS began to engage in the purchase of Rostelecom for several reasons. The first is a state ban on the purchase of foreign software by state-owned companies, if there is an analogue of Russian development. This is a software package "My Office". The second is that only one company called Comparex participated in the tender.
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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. According to Rostelecom representatives, Comparex has exclusive rights to supply Microsoft licenses and software for state-owned companies.

In fact, the state operator took advantage of a loophole in the law, according to which it was forbidden to purchase new software, but not to renew the license previously acquired.

The Ministry of Communications and Mass Media reacted to the tender, which took the initiative to prohibit the renewal of licenses in the future to avoid the use of loopholes in the legislation. According to the ministry, now the share in the procurement of foreign software is 77%, while domestic - only 23%. At the same time, in 2015, the number of contracts for the purchase of domestic software, compared with 2014, has doubled.

In support of the tender for the purchase of Microsoft software, Rostelecom representatives indicated that it was physically impossible to transfer a huge company to other software over several years, build all the processes and retrain employees without huge losses. Also, the use of outdated software poses a serious threat to the information security of companies. At the same time, almost all state structures are distinguished by excessive cumbersomeness and inertia of the apparatus, which excludes scenarios for a quick and painless transition to other software.