Results of the K2Tech discussion at CIPR-2024
At the CIPR-2024 conference, K2Tech held a session entitled “Implementation Cannot Be Postponed. Building an IT Infrastructure Today” with IT market leaders — major customers and vendors. During the dialogue, the session participants discussed the current situation in the industry, current challenges, and import substitution prospects.
In this material, we will share the results of the discussion at CIPR. And we will talk about the main trends of the IT market, the status of companies' transition to Russian solutions and approaches to building IT infrastructure.
More than two years of a new reality – what's happening in the IT industry?
Since the familiar Western technologies became unavailable, the register of domestic software has increased by more than 60%. The first major implementations have taken place and leaders have emerged.
Last fall, K2Tech conducted a large-scale study, according to which in 2023, 68% of the largest Russian companies have purposefully implemented migration projects to domestic solutions. Of course, the complete transition has not yet occurred, but there are companies that have advanced quite far. And by 2030, 80% of Russian companies will have to switch to domestic software. Clear deadlines for achieving these goals are also established by Russian legislation.
To meet the deadline, it is important to unite the efforts of all participants in the IT market. Therefore, representatives of the oil and gas and nuclear industries, large manufacturers of hardware and software solutions came together to discuss the situation from all sides, find out how things are going with the development of products and find ways to solve their problems.
Introducing the participants in our discussion:
Diana SunyaevaHead of Strategy, IT Development and New Product Creation at Gazprom Neft, Deputy Chairman of the Association of Largest Software and Hardware Consumers in the role of Deputy Chairman;
Igor SkobelevGeneral Director of Tsifrum (Rosatom State Corporation);
Andrey KlimovDirector for Key Accounts at Astra Group;
Alexei Zotov, Head of IT Infrastructure Department at K2Tech;
Evgeniy ShishkovManaging Director of Orion soft;
Andrey AndrianovVice President for Strategic Development, Aquarius;
Igor ZeldetsDeputy General Director for Business Development K2Tech (discussion moderator)
Stages of building a new IT infrastructure: how to set priorities?
Large companies were concerned about the transition to domestic infrastructure 10 years ago and have been systematically working on it ever since. The need to switch to Russian solutions in the last few years has not come as a surprise to them. Priorities have changed: in 2022, the import substitution process accelerated, and the emphasis on technological sustainability increased.
The main stages of transition in different companies are similar:
Setting priorities. First, a list of systems that should undergo import substitution first is compiled. And although at first this list of customers was small, it is clear that over time the legislation in this area will become stricter. So the vector in which to move is obvious. Now priority is given to everything that relates to significant objects of critical information infrastructure (CII). But in the foreseeable future, this list of CCII will expand, and after it, the list of systems for import substitution.
Modernization and re-introduction. Companies then move on to replacing additional supporting information systems as previous solutions become obsolete or new functionality and automation of additional processes are required. Another reason for replacement may be the lack of technical support or the unavailability of critical updates necessary for the full operation of a particular product.
In fact, the situation on the market is now very heterogeneous: some have not even started import substitution yet, some, for one reason or another, “jumped in headfirst” (implemented a solution and only then adapted), and some have already developed since 2014 The import substitution strategy is now almost at the finish line. As a result, the leaders in the transition were the largest representatives of the energy and oil and gas industries, and, of course, state-owned companies. Currently, their import substitution status varies at a level of more than 70%. And not only in terms of application software, but also in terms of basic infrastructure software: operating systems, DBMS, virtualization systems, monitoring, backup. Therefore, the discussion participants, in general, positively assessed the intensive transition to domestic solutions.
What difficulties do companies face during the transition and how do Russian solutions perform?
When switching to domestic solutions, companies face challenges. Here are the main points that business representatives emphasized:
Increasing the maturity of IT products. Now the situation in the infrastructure solutions market is more stable than in 2022. And over the past two years, Russian manufacturers have made significant progress in increasing the level of maturity of their products and developing their functionality. However, Russian vendors still have growth areas. For example, according to the discussion participants, the creation of ready-made ecosystems from software compatible with each other is one of the most promising areas. This is necessary, conditionally, so that you no longer have to integrate 5-6 pieces of dissimilar software from different manufacturers, but it would be possible to implement an ecosystem from one manufacturer at a time.
The need to consolidate domestic producers through technological partnerships – this, one might say, is a consequence of the previous point. Companies have a request to increase the level of compatibility between solutions from different vendors. And this applies not only to software solutions, but also to hardware ones. Requests for software and hardware systems are growing exponentially from year to year.
The need to synchronize the customer's business goals and the product development roadmap. Not all manufacturers yet understand the needs of their customers well. Businesses have to assemble separate teams that closely interact with manufacturers: they determine the priorities of the backlog, suggest how this or that functionality should be implemented.
Employees are unwilling to quickly move to solutions that do not meet expectations after working with more mature products. To cope with this challenge, complex work with employees, additional training and demonstration of the use of domestic solutions is required.
Tasks and challenges in vendor projects: how are they solved?
Russian suppliers need to go through the same process in a minimum amount of time that giants like IBM and Microsoft took years to complete. By studying the experience of foreign vendors, they are adopting best practices, assembling multi-component ecosystems, and fill the niches of departed suppliers. At first it was scary to give up the usual solutions and their compatibility. But difficulties became the driver for the emergence of new approaches: developing client applications, using Java, Wine.
Vendors help those who have already implemented domestic solutions scaling products. One of the main challenges is the migration of large volumes of data and diverse systems. Vendors provide tools for seamless migration, resource support and offer Technical Account Manager services for large projects. Together with clients they decide integration problems at the intersection of infrastructure solutions, information security and application systems.
Also vendors now focus on learning employees on the side of their customers and IT partners. Piloting, implementation, support and other stages of projects entail a fairly large amount of work. And if the staff is unprepared, these processes take significantly more time. Therefore, Russian solution manufacturers are now trying to become a source of information for customers and IT partners: they offer demo equipment for study, develop not only their own training programs, but also partner ones, together with other vendors.
The role of system integrators today. How to switch to import-independent solutions?
During the discussion, the opinion was expressed that until 2022, system integrators played a significant role in building IT infrastructures of Russian companies. And over the past two years, their contribution has become less noticeable compared to manufacturers of domestic solutions and their customers. Indeed, against the backdrop of the growing demand for import substitution in the information space, much more attention has been paid to vendors. However, based on our own practice, we at K2Tech are seeing a real IT consulting boom. Representatives of large Russian companies are increasingly interested in an integrated approach to import substitution: what solutions to switch to, in what order to implement them, how to build a roadmap, how new solutions will work with the current infrastructure, how to migrate already accumulated data, and so on.
This is explained by the fact that the course for import substitution was initially taken back in 2014, when a single register of domestic software appeared. And if at that time it contained only a few dozen solutions, now there are tens of thousands. Previously, each segment was represented by 1-2 large manufacturers, and single-vendor solutions prevailed – many closely integrated products from one manufacturer. Now the register there are 70-80 operating systems alone and almost 40 more virtualization platformsIt is not easy to understand this diversity.
As a result, customers are forced to create long lists, write out all the solutions that are present on the market directly from the register, then make a list of critical functional requirements, filter and test the solutions for compliance with the declared capabilities and compatibility with each other. And here the role of the system integrator comes to the forebecause what is important here is the experience, expertise and implementation experience in different classes of solutions. K2Tech, as an integrator, receives many requests for consulting on the choice of solutions, building transition roadmaps. Over the past year, more than a hundred such requests have been received for IT consulting.
The next step after choosing a solution is pilot project in the customer's infrastructure. The best option is to purchase licenses for several dozen or hundreds of users and implement the solution. In addition, it is now becoming relevant approach with creation of a hybrid, horizontally scalable infrastructure. That is, in parallel with the current infrastructure, another domain controller / mail server / virtualization platform is installed next to it, with which communication or trust relationships are configured. And then they work in such a hybrid environment. You can transfer some users to this pilot zone in case an emergency transition is required – then the company will already have trained users, a technical support team and administrators ready to provide assistance.
After implementation it is required systems support: knowledge transfer, end-user training, technical support. Moreover, the situation is such that due to the rush demand, vendors are physically not enough for everyone. Their teams are growing, but there are too many customers. Therefore, the practice has become widespread when 1 and 2 support lines (L1, L2) are given to integrator partners, and L3 cases (with really complex problems that require modifications and writing patches) are taken on by the vendor. Thus, the integrator becomes a single window for the customerwhere all issues can be resolved. Russian open spaces and scope suggest that vendors in their part can provide third-level support, but without a serious integrator and a single convenient window, it is usually not possible to ensure normal cross-platform compatibility.
What are your development plans: what technologies are currently most in demand and how difficult is it to develop them?
On the development side, some vendors are rethinking their strategies, placing more emphasis on the infrastructure layer, software, ecosystem and connectivity of components to create integrated vertical solution packages.
The greatest demand is currently observed for technologies related to 3D-VDI, especially in industry. In large enterprises, there is a trend towards development in the direction of multicloud. This is an approach in which a company uses several public or private clouds from different providers. Among them, “Gosoblako” appeared; often customers have their own installations. Therefore, their requests are mainly for automation, orchestration and reduction of manual operations of administrators. And also convenient tools for working with various types of infrastructure.
Another important direction of development is transition from monolithic systems to microserviceswhich leads to increased demand for, for example, Kubernetes. There is also a demand for comprehensive umbrella monitoring for software products and detailed control of individual components.
Recently, infrastructure systems have been especially relevant for related departments, primarily for information security specialists. Working with role models and access is important here. And of course, sustainability and reliability, because customers still expect continuity in their core services. Requirements for the volume of information, speed and distances for data replication between sites are increasing, which is becoming another trend for the near future.
That's all! If you want to watch the full version of the discussion, go to YouTube link.
