One of the segments of Russian economy, which needs import substitution to a maximum extent, is the sphere of IТ technologies.
Text: Nikolai Bromilev
Original code
“Today we are in the unique situation, uniquely bad, when we have only 10 % of electronic equipment, new equipment in the Russian market delivered from Russia”, said Dmitry Saprykin, Director General of a group of companies NII ESTO.
According to the expert’s assessment the national electronics industry has never reached this lowest level. In the Soviet Union this share was nearing 90 %; in the Russian Empire a share of components for the electric appliances exceeded 50%.
Such a dependence on import can be found in Mexico only, if we look at the countries with their own developed economies. “Russia is in the 7th or 8th place by the market volume and industrial potential and in the 20th place by the production of electronic equipment”, admits Dmitry Saprykin. Actually, this is a technological slavery.
It is natural that the specialized departments can not but respond to such an evident technological weakness.
Pace voltage
Nikolai Nikiforov, the Minister for Communications and the Media of the Russian Federation stated at the Russian Interactive Week 2014 Forum that an increase of IT specialized state-funded places at the state higher institutions by 35% as well as liberalization of a system of granting privileges to small IT companies and putting new technological clusters into action can be added on to measures for the state support of the industry. Besides, more and more preferences are given to the Russian software when making purchases for the state bodies and state-run companies.
According to the “Strategy of development of information technologies industry in the Russian Federation for 2014–2020 and in perspective up to 2025” the work on extending the list of supporting measures will continue this year. For instance, it is expected to give consideration to a number of legislative initiatives.
For example, a legislative proposal, including standards on implementation of optional programs for the employees and an amendment to act about insurance contributions taking out risks of excluding sales of licenses from calculation of the share of “speciality” incomes for IT companies for using the reduced tariffs of insurance contributions. The modernization of a system of training the industry personnel is going on.
Close relations
The experts of the Institute of social and economic modernization (ISEM), on their part, have compiled a rating for the Russian IT companies, which are the most prepared to import substitution of the foreign technologies.
The third place in the rating is taken by the development agency of the enterprise control systems “Parus”.
The selection criteria include: available production of the in-house IT product, a degree of utilization of foreign software-hardware components in the company’s produce, a possibility of replacing the foreign IT produce with the national products or components with open code (for software), compliance with the requirements of information safety…
The second position was occupied by the known development agency of accounting software 1С.
The first place was won by Cognitive Technologies. According to explanations of the rating originators this company has recently got a competitive advantage against the recognized foreign producers in the segment of state purchases of the control systems. “This Russian enterprise also known by its specialization in building artificial intellect systems has recently decided to enter the competition with Google itself after declaration of building the Russian version of unmanned vehicle by 2020”, reminded ISEM experts.
INFORMATION
Six working groups incorporating more than 100 leading specialists of the biggest Russian companies of the information and communication technologies sector were formed in 2014 at the Expert council for the development of information technologies industry. The work of groups will encompass all types of critical software: client operational systems (OS), cloud and server OS and means of virtualization, databases control systems, office SW for joint work, engineering SW and mathematic modeling SW, geo-informational systems.
The Expert council included the heads of the leading Russian and International IT companies (ABBYY, Yandex, 1С, Lanit, IT, Reksoft, Acronis, Ecwid and other), national development institutes (Skolkovo, RCC, Fund for the Promotion of the Development of Small Businesses in the Sphere of Science and Technology), specialized IT associations (“Domestic soft”, Association of Computer and IT Businesses, RUSSOFT) and other organizations.
Nikolai Nikiforov:
It is necessary to develop a model, where a number of market players will consolidate their development efforts. This will result in the emergence of the basic product, which will be later developed and commercialized by the association participants, both state and private development agencies in the framework of their bigger projects.
