Participation in CNEWS exhibition "Import substitution 2023

April 4, 2023 CNews conference was held «Импортозамещение 2023». The event was dedicated to discussing the independence of Russian companies from foreign IT products. As the conference participants noted, the Russian market is in a unique situation. Many companies are having difficulty finding and switching to analogues of services and platforms that have left Russia. Some spheres are still almost fully dependent on foreign software. At the same time, a sharp increase in demand for domestic products and lack of competition from foreign giants create ideal conditions for the development of Russian IT projects.

Russian analogues of foreign solutions

Under current conditions, we can expect the development of projects which will not only become an alternative to the abandoned platforms and services, but will compete with the largest solutions on foreign markets. Some of these projects were presented at the CNews conference.

Representatives of vStack presented to the participants a new platform for building virtual data centers, which can replace VMware, which left the Russian market. The company stakes on self-development and the actual needs of its clients. In contrast to foreign analogs, the platform from vStack is lightweight and does not contain redundancy in the code base. This significantly improves the performance of the system for virtualization. The automatic fault tolerance mechanism with n+2 redundancy has been implemented to ensure uninterrupted operation.

The vStack company has long been committed to import substitution. Now we are ready to share our accumulated experience with other market participants. And we have a lot to tell, because vStack is not just a 100% Russian platform that can replace products of foreign players. We initially focused on independence from specific hardware manufacturers and the ability to work with hardware of different levels. This helps to give up foreign hardware without compromising the performance and fault tolerance of the platform.”

Stanislav Mril, CEO of vStack

T1 CRM also presented its solution. The company described its product – a Russian CRM-platform for the automation of sales and customer service. The developers created a flexible solution consisting of independent modules. Because of this structure, the platform can be implemented in stages with no loss of functionality. Its employees also presented a checklist for migration from foreign solutions to domestic ones.

Employees of Consist Business Group (part of Lanit Group) told about the advantages of Turbo Tracking. This solution was created to solve problems of project teams and helps solve issues with project planning, task management, document storage, etc.

Russian business got the ideal conditions for growth

During the CNews conference, participants presented reports and presentations with information about opportunities for the transition to Russian products and answers to questions that arise in this process.

“Many people are still concerned about the topic of import substitution. However, today companies no longer want to discuss replacing foreign software with Russian as a forced measure. More and more executives are paying attention to the advantages of this transition. I read a report on the topic “To switch cannot stay” – put a comma in the right place. It was about the obstacles in the transition to import substitution. Most often it is not technology, but psychological unpreparedness of customers. It is good that these barriers began to gradually disappear, and more and more companies realize the advantages of switching to domestic solutions.

Evgeny Karpov, vStack Platform Development Manager

The conference participants came to the conclusion that in general 2023 can become a turning point and lead to significant progress in the issues of import substitution and achievement of technological independence in our country. Russian software manufacturers found themselves in favorable conditions and many took advantage of them. While the projects of foreign companies are suspended, the demand for Russian products has increased, companies have already started switching to domestic software, and the pilot periods are now up to 2-4 months.

The highest need for import substitution is in the industry and energy sector. Here, it often happens that foreign software has been in use for years, which complicates the transition process. The process of import substitution in retail and finance is more active. Another difficulty for domestic IT companies is the lack of specialists, tools and the absence of some industry development standards.

Experts predict that in 2023, many of these issues will be resolved, and the year will be a unique period of opportunity for domestic manufacturers of IT products.