Virtualization and import substitution: SPB CIO CLUB meeting

On January 26, 2023, the traditional meeting Club of IT-directors of the largest companies in the North-West region. The topic of the meeting was “Technology and people. Overview of virtualization systems and the IT labor market in 2023. At the meeting, Evgeny Karpov, an expert from vStack, spoke, where he gave an overview of virtualization systems, spoke about the Russian market and alternatives to products that have gone away.

SPB CIO CLUB is one of the largest professional IT communities in Russia, uniting IT directors of the North-West region. The club holds regular meetings to discuss current topics of interest to IT managers.

Today, one of the hot topics is an overview of the Russian market of IT solutions that can replace products of foreign vendors who left Russia. Many IT managers are also interested in virtualization systems, without which the process of business digitalization is impossible.

These topics were covered in the report of the vStack expert Evgeniy Karpov, who told about the current situation on the virtualization market in Russia and noted the important features for the participants.

“We have accumulated a wealth of experience in virtualization, have studied the Russian market and are ready to share information with company executives,” commented Evgeny Karpov, development manager of the vStack hyperconverged platform. — As the meeting showed, our knowledge was in demand among the market participants, as many of them are in search of a solution to replace foreign platforms or to digitize business processes. For us, participation in the IT Managers Club is an opportunity to be close to our target audience, to learn about what is relevant for C-Level employees, about sentiments in this environment.

One of the key points of the presentation was a review of Russian virtualization systems and discussion of the situation with VMware, the largest company in the field, whose departure affected most of the major IT companies in the country. For all participants of the meeting it was obvious that the main solution of this problem is the transition to domestic virtualization systems.

Against this background, Evgeny Karpov presented a relatively new solution for the Russian market – hyperconvergent platform vStack, whose functionality will replace VMware and even perform some tasks more effectively.

The expert noted that some major Russian companies have also begun to develop their own hyperconverged platforms, after which club members discussed what points to pay attention to when choosing a hyperconverged platform for virtualization.

The participants of the meeting found out that today proprietary software is preferable to solutions based on open source technologies. The discussion led to the conclusion that when choosing a tool it is important to pay attention to the ability to work correctly in conditions of CPU Overcommit, which directly affects the cost-effectiveness of the solution.

Another important point is the presence of redundant code to solve irrelevant problems, the presence of which increases the cost of the platform, but does not bring any benefit.

In 2023, vStack became an official partner of the SPB CIO CLUB. Now the company’s experts will regularly participate in the Club’s meetings, discussions and selection of topics for discussion.