Difficulties of growth: how to make the clouds work?



 The market of cloud services in Russia is undoubtedly actively growing, but what are its real sizes? Year after year, analytical companies publish their estimates, which differ by several times. The reason is that until now there is no generally accepted research methodology. In particular, the range of products and services that relate specifically to clouds, rather than to related areas, is not defined.

Problems and Sheriffs

The cloud market is young and is in the stage of active growth and, in part, transformation. Nevertheless, growth continues. To a large extent, it is determined by the performance of major ICT providers, including Huawei. Until recently, we knew it as an exclusively telecommunications company, until it announced its withdrawal to other high-tech markets in Russia.


Director of the IT solutions department of Huawei Artur Pärn presented his company's view of the domestic cloud services market. One of the problems is that there is growth, but it is not explosive. We do not see a sharp "take-off" of either internal automation on cloud technologies or public services. "The cloud market has not only drivers, but stoppers," Alexander is convinced. - The first thing that impedes development is the lack of data centers that offer public clouds certified for compliance with 152-FZ "On Personal Data". What kind of development can be said if, according to the law, a cloud with personal data can only be private, even if it is located in the data center? The second obstacle is the erroneous opinion that clouds are cheaper than owning their own infrastructure. When calculating the cost of ownership for several years, this is not always the case. " The last statement caused discussion among the participants of the section, which revealed the same problem: everyone puts into the concept of "clouds" a different content.


In the relationship of cloud technologies and the economy need to clarify. One of the aspects of this was commented by Sergey Tabulin, head of IBM's cloud solutions department in Russia and the CIS. In his opinion, the clouds provide access to new business models and "work on the API-economy." In this statement, he was referring not to the Application Programming Interface itself, but to the organization's API strategy, which includes the development of business products based on existing APIs, the provision of services to developers, and the API monetization model for building multi-channel interaction and increasing profits. "The principle of the API-economy is the provision of existing business assets through a digital interface for use by external and internal developers when creating new services and applications," the speaker says. - And the most interesting thing here is that there is an ecosystem - something that modern companies love very much. They want more services to gain access to new markets and expand opportunities on existing ones. " Implementation of these principles is possible on cloud technologies.

Anton Salov, the director of the project office of Rostelecom, also devoted his speech to the analysis of the situation in the market of state loans. With this market are inextricably linked events that have become drivers of the growth of cloud services in the country as a whole. Not so long ago in Russia, computer hardware has risen in price, and those who could not buy equipment, had to switch to the services of service providers. And those, in turn, traditionally purchase equipment for future use and therefore were able to afford the expansion of the volume of services. The market, according to the speaker, has grown significantly - many analysts even underestimate the rate of its increase. As for the "public sector of the cloud market," its fate is largely determined by Government Decision No. 1236 of November 16, 2015, which limited the use of foreign software. And now a number of organizations are obliged to purchase only the software that is present in the register of domestic software. "But it is interesting that in this resolution it is not said about the domestic data centers. And if you want to buy some foreign program, you can still turn to Russian service providers and purchase it as a service, "said Anton Salov.

The SaaS theme was less likely to meet as a topic for discussion, although there is much to be said. This model of cloud services was devoted to the speech by the development director of the company "Axiomatika" Mikhail Lyapin. He recalled that it is possible to discuss the applicability of technologies to this or that segment of the market only in the context of the economy: if the segment does not bring money, then the clouds will not "fly up" either. As an example, he called the SME sector, which SaaS vendors hoped for, drawing enormous prospects with hundreds of billions of dollars in turnover. "In fact," Mikhail Lyapin believes, "there is no money in SMB for SaaS suppliers. The Russian cloud market is almost 10 years old. Except for SKB Kontur, the average successful Russian cloud service has between 5 and 15 thousand customers, while in Russia there are about 3.5 million companies without one-day tickets. That is, the penetration of the average popular SaaS service in Russia is 0.1%. " The only company that managed to really earn software in the form of services for SMBs in Russia is, according to the speaker, "1C", and everyone else is better off looking for profits in the Enterprise sector.

Data centers and clouds are changing, says Vladimir Uraev, senior sales specialist for DC & Cloud in the EMEA region of Juniper Network. "Is it easy to use clouds today? No, because 95% of companies face problems when moving their data to the cloud. 31% have a problem with changing internal models of work in connection with such a transition, - the speaker said. - Automation of the data center becomes very popular direction, because up to now almost half of the failures in them are due to the fault of the human factor. The share of hybrid clouds is growing: 82% of large companies in the world use this model. " Changes are noticeable almost everywhere. In particular, with increasing load on data centers, an increase in internal traffic is associated, which forces suppliers to implement more efficient network architectures.


What does this give the market?

Director of Business Development of HERE Pavel Kozlov dwelled on the decisions his company owns in the sphere of cloud services. The first geolocation cloud HERE launched in 2011, and after it was purchased by an automobile consortium, its efforts were concentrated, among other things, on the creation of cloud-based geolocation services for robotic machines. "Motor transport is only part of what we do," he said. - Recently, there is an increasing need to process data relating to the Internet of things. But still the most important device connected to the Internet of things is a car. And the data from the car sensors form the basis of the new cartography, they allow creating new services that were impossible before. "
Vitaly Morozov, head of the group of DC & Telecom company ABB, also translated the topic of clouds into the plane of the Internet of things. It is characteristic that this company, which produces electrical equipment and does not have a direct relationship to ICT, is also ready to produce equipment for the Internet of things, in particular for the power supply systems of data centers. Thus, it is once again confirmed that cloud technologies at the intersection of industries provide additional opportunities for the emergence of new solutions. "There is a need to create new data center management platforms," ​​says Vitaly Morozov. "The Internet of things will cover all aspects, from exploitation to long-term planning: analytics will be expanded with additional information, the approach to preventive maintenance will be changed through the self-diagnostics of devices of a new type."

Lattelecom is the largest IT integrator in the Baltic States, and its business is similar to the one we know Rostelecom, said Maris Sperga, director of data center solutions. In particular, he offered the participants of the forum his vision of problems and restrictions that hamper the growth of the clouds. "All IT in the clouds will never pass," he said. - This is hampered primarily by the fear of giving their data to the provider. The second limiter is distrust of security in the clouds. And, finally, the problems of compatibility of technologies interfere ". How can we overcome these limitations and succeed in developing cloud services?
According to Maris Spergi, the supplier must constantly change and develop in accordance with the development of the market. He should train clients, talk about the possibilities and technologies of the clouds. The supplier needs to work closely with the business customer about the transition to the cloud. And it is very important to maintain high-level content.

A look from the other side

Anton Pryamikov, Director of IT Support and Support Department at Europlan Group, spoke about the practical approach to building cloud services from the point of view of the customer. This leasing company has upgraded the IT infrastructure using private cloud capabilities. In a single virtual data center, which is built on distributed sites, 47 services of the company have been implemented. About 1,800 employees of the company are connected to them. Also, the speaker shared his opinion on what business needs from the IT service: "Business needs to fulfill five points. The first - everything works always, everywhere and quickly. Second - any malfunctions are eliminated in minutes. Third - the errors of the program code are corrected for hours. Fourth - changing the existing software is done over the days. And the fifth - the introduction of new technologies takes weeks. "

There is a serious problem in the health care market, connected with the exchange of data between different medical organizations and patients. The only real way to unite them, according to Sergei Gilyov, the IT director of Medscan, is to use cloud solutions. Why is this problem relevant right now? Young people have a fashion for fitness trackers and other wearable electronics, which accumulates potentially useful health data. In addition, people are already used to receiving services remotely and in a "mobile" form. And, finally, medical technologies allow to respond to the requirement of remote medical data acquisition by patients.
But one problem hinders: this market does not exist. Doctors, public and private clinics, patients are not related information in any way. "What can be done in this situation? You need to have a single cloud platform for everyone that will allow you to download, save and share data, but in a simple action for the user. The patient should be able to choose a doctor, and, most importantly, there should be an opportunity to ask the doctor directly from the application with a question, "Sergei Gilyov is convinced.

Against the stream

The market knows examples of not only the transition to the clouds, but also the rejection of it. Victor Wagner, head of the IT department of Absolute Insurance, said that due to a number of shortcomings in the server software, he had to abandon the existing virtualization system and start searching for a replacement. "After communicating with the providers of cloud services, it was decided not to use them," the speaker said. - Firstly, we wanted to use the acquired software before the end of its operation, and not to renew the subscription each time for additional money. Secondly, the amount that we counted for transferring the three main servers to the clouds was 120-160 thousand rubles a month - for our small company these expenses are inexpedient. Add to this the need to expand the access channel to the Internet and the existing ban on the placement of certain data outside the company's territory. " Thus, the option of switching to the cloud was not possible, and the company instead introduced another virtualization system.



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