Looks like a lot of US software companies are going to bear the brunt in Russia. According to a report in Bloomberg, Moscow is doing away with Microsoft’s services. Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked state officials and local companies to reduce their reliance on foreign technologies.
According to the report, email systems developed by state-run carrier Rostelecom PJSC will be replacing Microsoft Exchange and Outlook on 6000 computers. Moscow is also considering replacing Microsoft Windows and Office services on nearly 600,000 devices with software developed by Russia’s New Cloud Technologies.
Putin has called for state entities and local companies to start relying less on foreign services after some US companies shut down paid services in Crimea after Russia’s 2014 annexation.
This plan will affect companies such as Microsoft, SAP SE and Oracle Corp in Russia’s $3bn software market says Bloomberg.
In addition to this, Putin’s internet head German Klimenko wants to increase taxes on US technology companies to ensure advantage for Russian companies such as Yandex NV and Mail.ru Group Ltd. These taxes go as high as 18 percent on app store purchases on Apple and Google play stores.
“We want the money of taxpayers and state-run firms to be primarily spent on local software,” communications minister Nikolay Nikiforov has told reporters. According to him, Russia spends around $295 mn on foreign software every year. He has come up with a list of around 2000 Russian software alternatives that are expected to be used by state-run services instead of ones from global vendors.
Even Cisco Systems Inc’s technology for city surveillance cameras in Moscow has been replaced with a local software, said head of IT for Moscow Artem Yermolaev.
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