The Arbitration Court did not support the "New Cloud Technologies" in the case against the Ministry of Construction and Microsoft

The Arbitration Court did not support the Russian company New Cloud Technologies (manufacturer of the office software package My Office) in its lawsuit against the purchase of Microsoft’s software by the Ministry of Construction, reports Vedomosti.

In September 2016, the software maker “New Cloud Technologies” filed a lawsuit with the Ministry of Construction's purchase of 400 licenses for Windows operating systems, database systems and antiviruses produced by Microsoft in the amount of 15.1 million rubles.

According to the law, which entered into force on January 1, 2016, state agencies in the procurement of software must give preference to domestic manufacturers in the presence of analogues. "New cloud technologies" saw in the actions of the Ministry of Construction a violation of this law, which was the reason for the claim.
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On the other hand, if the domestic software does not meet the requirements of the customer, he may refuse to purchase it in favor of the foreign one. At the same time, the purchasing organization should provide a public justification for its decision.

The Ministry of Construction resulted in such a justification: after analyzing the “My Office” package in the department, they came to the conclusion that the domestic software is incompatible with the existing infrastructure of the organization and does not meet several requirements. The Federal Antimonopoly Service was attracted to the case, which concluded that the above wording “does not meet the requirements” and is insufficient, and the exact discrepancies of “My Office” with the requirements of the Ministry of Construction were not announced. However, the regulator did not issue instructions on elimination of violations, since the auction for the purchase of software has already taken place and it could only be challenged through the courts.

This is not the first situation with the purchase of software from Microsoft instead of domestic manufacturers. Earlier, the state operator Rostelecom extended licenses for operating systems and office applications of the American manufacturer in the amount of 1.26 billion rubles. According to the law, Rostelecom should have given preference to domestic software, but it did not purchase, but extended the licenses already purchased, that is, it took advantage of the legal loophole in the wording. FAS checked the actions of Rostelecom and found no violations.

This purchase caused a serious response, which led to a discussion of the existing procurement standards for domestic software. For example, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media made a restriction on the right to renew licenses of previously acquired software.

At the same time, Rostelecom is the official partner and distributor of the My Office software package produced by New Cloud Technologies. Representatives of the state operator noted that one of the reasons for choosing Microsoft products is the cumbersome internal structure and the painfulness of the abrupt transition to a different software maker.