We are witnessing active growth in the Russian cloud services market

— Natalia, which sanction packages have had a particularly strong impact on the IT cloud landscape of Russian companies?

 — The most notorious were probably the sanctions that contributed to foreign vendors leaving the Russian market (Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Cisco, IMB, NVIDIA, etc.). Yes, it's difficult, it's unpleasant, but the workflow of companies relying on the solutions of the companies that left didn't stop. It was a bit of a struggle, but IT and the business pulled it off. Looking back at recent ICL Services projects, in some cases, PostgreSQL replaced SQL Server or Oracle, in others, UserGate replaced Cisco with firewall, proxy and VPN services. There are many examples.

 We also see that the companies that were not ready or were considering the public cloud as a backup option are already deploying their IT systems in public clouds or are planning to do so in the near future. This is largely due to logistics problems with server and network equipment, whereas in the cloud you can get capacity right now and run a project without downtime.

 — What sanctions-related processes affecting cloud services have taken place in the domestic market?

 — In the field of SaaS services, there are many foreign analogues that cover the B2C and B2B market and include the functionality required specifically for Russian customers (for example, compliance with №152-FL).

 Many cloud vendors have passed the process of inclusion in the Russian software registry (in which you can find solutions fr om Cloud (formerly SberCloud), VK Cloud, Yandex Cloud platform, etc.).

Cloud services, including PaaS, based on in-house developments and Open Source solutions, started rapidly developing. To monitor solutions in VK Cloud, you can easily connect a Zabbix agent or export metrics in Prometheus format to Yandex Cloud.

 — What actions have domestic integrators taken in this situation?

 — Different companies reacted differently, but all tried to minimize the impact on end customers and keep contractual obligations. Many companies have undergone organizational and structural changes aimed at maintaining both their international and Russian business.

 On the technological side, companies have expanded their solution stack to more actively include not only Open Source products, but also products from Indian and Chinese vendors. ICL Services offers solution implementation from vendors such as Arcon, Vinchin, WSO2, which can be a replacement for CyberArk, Wallix, OneIdentity, BeyondTrust, Acronis, Veeam products used in private or hybrid cloud solutions. Our company, like most others, has increased investment in its employees, giving them the opportunity to learn how to work with new products to continue providing quality services to the customer. Of everyday tasks, an interesting example is that we are switching from Ubuntu to Astra Linux.

 Together with our key partner Softline, ICL Services has helped Russian users of Microsoft products line, who lost their technical support as part of Premier Service. Now users can get high-quality technical support and consulting on Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Office, Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Server, Microsoft SharePoint, and other Microsoft products from professional ICL Services specialists. To interact with users, we use a platform for receiving and handling incidents, based on ICL Services' own development called Arbeiten, which we deployed to one of the public clouds at short notice.

 — How have Russian companies' clouds (public, private, hybrid) changed so far under sanctions?

— We are witnessing an active growth of the Russian cloud services market. And it's been going on for several years now. In particular, our company sees this through the expansion of cloud services offered, the demand for projects to deploy solutions in the cloud, as well as the active development of partnership programs and the expansion of training materials from members of the cloud market.

The imposed sanctions and the current circumstances are contributing to the growing demand for Russian clouds, which, as noted above, are ready for this — both in terms of service and technology. And the increased demand accelerates their growth and development, including new services in both Preview and GA. Russian vendors listen to customer requests and promptly add relevant functionality to the platform. The recent Yandex Scale conference introduced us to Cloud Backup services for virtual machines and user group management functionality. But Russian cloud services don't always have to catch up. For example, the automatic update of a managed Kubernetes cluster in Yandex Cloud was released even earlier than a similar feature in Azure Kubernetes Services.

With increased demand, Russian clouds are changing not just technologically, but also in terms of business. An example would be a new capacity reservation service and a corresponding discount. This, in turn, allows cloud providers to better predict the dynamics of capacity utilization.

Russian clouds continue to grow even in the face of complicated logistics: Russian cloud providers announce the creation of new data centers and the expansion of availability zones. For example, VK Cloud plans to launch a data center in Kazakhstan, and Yandex Cloud announced the launch of a new data center in Kaluga.

— Have the integrators (your company in particular) changed the offers?

— Offers now include services for the migration of solutions from foreign clouds to Russian clouds. Both integrators and end customers are interested in this, striving to ensure that end users do not face restrictions in accessing the system.

For its part, ICL Services offers a service for IT infrastructure migration from foreign clouds such as AWS, Azure, GCP to Russian clouds: Yandex Cloud, Cloud (formerly SberCloud), MTS Cloud, VK Cloud, BeeCloud. We understand how important it is to keep the workflow of the company, so we conduct an audit and prepare a proposal on average within 2–5 days. Our teams of architects and engineers can not only plan and execute the migration, but also decide on the target cloud, taking into account the current infrastructure and key requirements. For example, if the central part of the infrastructure is a Kubernetes cluster, we can offer the extensible Managed Service for Kubernetes from Yandex Cloud; if USB ports are relevant, then Cloud (previously SberCloud); if Site to site VPN as a managed service integrated into the overall network infrastructure is needed, then VK Cloud. Our vast experience in foreign cloud projects and effective partnership relations with Russian cloud vendors help a lot in migration projects like this.

Another popular initiative that we are actively working on is the replacement of imported software with Russian or open source software. We conduct such projects in-house as well, for example, we switched from Microsoft Teams to Yandex 360. This transition has strengthened our expertise in similar migration projects, which has already allowed us to complete commercial projects for our customers with less risk and in a shorter time frame.

The Russian cloud migration and software import substitution processes are strongly interconnected, because quite often migration projects do not only involve migration itself, but also parallel software substitution and replacement with Open Source or other analogues. That' s wh ere ICL Services comes in, offering a comprehensive service and approach that solves migration and import substitution problems.

— How do you think the situation will unfold?

— This is the most difficult question. Any development now is associated with certain risk. The main risks we see are:

• - Code with undocumented features getting into the production environment. We are actively developing Cyber Threat Intelligence service aimed at preventing and eliminating possible NPV-related weak points.
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• - Lack of software coverage of many critical areas for Russian infrastructures. We develop our own niche software solutions as well as existing solutions in cooperation with Russian vendors.
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• - Risks for manufacturing enterprises due to the lack of Russian integrated APCS tools (for example, the risk associated with the withdrawal of MasterSCADA fr om the Russian market and the replacement of this solution by others, the integration between which has not yet been built). This entails the risk of failing to build a comprehensive automated solution. ICL Services has launched and is currently developing a service new to the Russian market for the development and maintenance of virtual data exchange buses between different applications, which allows to partially reduce the impact of risks associated with the creation of complex automated solutions.
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• - Narrow specialization of domestic products due to low demand on the global market. As a service company working closely with end users of software, we are able to collect and accumulate feedback, identifying the current specific needs of our customers for missing software functionality, which we provide to our vendor partners to form a roadmap for their product development in accordance with the needs of the Russian software market.ю
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• - Lack of full-fledged support for hardware available for the domestic market from software tools and drivers. ICL Techno develops its own line of hardware platforms and supports them throughout their lifecycle. ICL Services also provides support for hardware platforms, replacing vendor support.
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• - Lack of vendor support for software in areas wh ere software replacement entails unacceptable risks of downtime. ICL Services has developed a line of service products aimed at replacing technical support services for imported software on the Russian market in the context of sanctions restrictions. I have already told about one such solution.
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The ICL Services team strives to be a stable partner for our clients even under constantly changing circumstances: we strengthen our specialists' competence in new alternative products, we plan our workload and resource availability, so that we can promptly start a migration project and complete it within a relatively short period of time.