There is more Russian software
In 2022, the Government published a decree according to which institutions from the list of critical infrastructure facilities must work only with software developed in Russia or the EAEU countries. The use of foreign software is permissible only if there are no domestic analogues and if its technical support is provided by Russian companies that are not subordinate to foreign ones.
In recent years, analogues of software products have been developed for such important industries as CAD, Smart Design, and Smart Manufacturing. The level of implementation of domestic general-purpose and application software in 2023 reached 56% (compared to 41% in 2021), and growth to 60% is expected by the end of 2024. According to experts, Russian operating systems, CRMs, electronic document management systems, video conferencing programs, application software, and b2b software are most fully represented. However, "released to the market" does not mean "easily replace what has left."
Currently, mainly state corporations, government bodies (federal and regional), and large businesses have switched to Russian products. Small and medium-sized enterprises often continue to use foreign software. By the end of 2023 – beginning of 2024, 68% of Russian companies had started import substitution, but they were able to replace only 10 to 50% of foreign programs. There are many reasons for such slow dynamics.
Transition to alternative products is delayed
Analogues have not been developed for many products. For example, in microelectronics, after the departure of foreign vendors, there are 65 areas that Russian developers cannot yet replace. These include, for example, topological design, statistical code verification, photomask design, printed circuit board design and modeling, and much more.
There are also problems in less specialized areas: there are still no full-fledged Russian analogues of Google Docs and Google Sheets. There is also a lack of software for high-load banking systems, so banks are asking the authorities to extend the transition period and postpone the abandonment of foreign software.
Another difficulty in import substitution is the insufficient functionality of Russian products. There may be many reasons why the functionality is insufficient: from the inability to add the desired option due to the peculiarities of the architecture to very high financial costs for implementation.
To work with import-substituting products, it is necessary to additionally train personnel, since programs that are similar in purpose are not always similar in maintenance and user scenarios. Specialists who previously worked with complex imported software are more willing to change jobs and move to private business than to retrain on analogues. This means that new ones need to be hired, but there is a shortage of IT specialists in the market. Their shortage in 2023 was estimated at 500–700 thousand people.
Other difficulties of software import substitution:
- Selecting a product, testing it, creating documentation, and training personnel to work with it require a lot of time, especially for large companies with a large number of branches. Experts note that organizations often need at least 3-5 years to switch to other software.
- Insufficient level of maturity of some analogues — a significant part software appeared recently, which means a high risk of growing pains, instability, the need for running-in and "fine-tuning". Not every business will want to be the first to test the product, find out if it is so good, wait another update with fixes. Many want to get a proven and reliable software.
- Switching to new software always implies financial costs, and for many organizations they turn out to be too high. For example, licenses for Astra Linux instead of Windows cost the TFOMS of the Oryol region 333 500 rubles.
- There is no structured relevant information about domestic analogues. There is only the Russoft marketplace, but it is little known.
A separate difficulty is compatibility issues. Replacing one product often cascades into the need to replace others. First, the new import-substituting product may not integrate well with others that the company uses. This issue is especially acute when a business abandons ecosystems — like Microsoft solutions. Russian products do not provide a complete replacement, you have to combine different solutions and solve their compatibility problems.
Secondly, replacing software may require replacing infrastructure, which is an additional expense. For example, in the segment of MES systems (production management), the best compatibility with existing equipment "out of the box" is with foreign software, as market participants say. At the same time, the equipment will soon also have to be changed, but now it will have to be selected so that it immediately ensures compatibility with the new software. In addition, there is no full-cycle "hardware" production in Russia.
Software import substitution is not only a matter of developing programs, which domestic specialists are gradually coping with, even if they have not yet covered all areas. There are a huge number of other issues: from high financial costs due to the forced replacement of infrastructure and related products, hiring new specialists to work with domestic analogues, to the need to rebuild business processes for new software. Therefore, the import substitution process is still far from over.
Photo: Unisender press service.