The difficulties of import substitution: a tool for state corporations is removed from the registry of domestic software

The public sector has long and widely used foreign software. Rather, used until recently. According to the order of the Ministry of Communications of 20.09.2018 No. 486, all state-owned companies must switch to domestic software. Not immediately, there is time until 2024.

State corporations have no choice - they have to get used to domestic software. One of the solutions presented by Russian software manufacturers has become very popular. It's about the CommuniGate Pro package from Communigate Systems Russia (Stalkersoft JSC). It was adopted by Russian Post, Gazprom, Russian Railways, the State Duma, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Federal Tax Service. But now unexpected problems have appeared - the domestic package turned out to be not quite Russian.

What a twist

According to Cnews reporters, it all started with a letter from an “enthusiast” who sent a letter to the Ministry of Communications with a request to check the copyright holder of CommuniGate Pro. He is a programmer Vladimir Butenko, who died in 2018.

The manufacturer’s website is American, it belongs to a company from the USA. The email address in zone.ru is also owned by the partner of the American organization in Moscow.

“CommuniGate Pro, downloaded from the communigate.ru domain, has no links to the communigate.ru domain, communigate.com is indicated everywhere (about 50 links),” the author of the letter to the Ministry notes.. - The US military is using the CommuniGate Pro server. At least, as stated on the American website of the company. There is no question of any Russian jurisdiction of the product. The heiress Butenko did not provide a certificate of the absence of other (besides Russia) citizenship. ”

At the same time, the copyright holder of CommuniGate in the United States is an American company that came to the Russian Federation only in 2015.

Having studied all these nuances, the Ministry of Communications decided to remove the software solution from the Registry. “Having checked in accordance with paragraph 30 (4) of the rules for the formation and maintenance of a single registry ..., the software will be excluded from the registry on the basis of subparagraph b of paragraph 33 of the rules if the appropriate decision is made by the Software Expert Council under the Ministry during the next in-person meeting ”, The document says.

And here the problems begin for domestic companies that used the package, since it included both communication tools (messenger) and office programs. Well, one can imagine the consequences of depriving thousands of employees of state-owned corporations of a familiar tool.

What are the alternatives?

The choice is not very large - there are few domestic platforms that would compare with CommuniGate Pro in functionality. They were mentioned somehow on Habré . The most realistic alternatives for state-owned corporations are My Office, P7 Office, Mail.ru Group. I wondered what they were.

"My office"

This package was already surveyed on Habré . This package has several versions, their choice is a rather difficult task. There is a “Standard” package, “Professional” and “Private cloud.” Plus there are education solutions and regular mail.



This package includes Mozilla Thunderbird and LibreOffice Impress, as if obviously not domestic products, plus different applications have similarities with other foreign products products.

The developers of "My Office" even commented on Habr’s reporters about this . In particular, it was stated "we do not copy solutions, but create a unique product that works on different platforms and devices, providing maximum protection and control over data, as well as supporting the trend of collaboration with documents."

Be that as it may, the package works, there are no special problems with it (and if so, write to the comments, we will discuss).

P7-

Bingo Office ! This product was also surveyed on Habré. As it turned out, this package is the Latvian cloud product OnlyOffice, whose development center is located in Russia. But OnlyOffice is free under its own name, while the P7 Office is already a paid product, which is considered to be a Russian development.



And it seems like this messenger does not include this package. Or I just did not find it.

Mail.ru for business

This package is different from the previous two. It itself is a domestic development, and not a converted foreign product. Inside - a cloud-based document editor (integration with Cloud Mail.Ru), corporate messenger, group chats, calendar, etc.

The package is free until June 14 of this year , probably due to the coronavirus.

The big plus of this package is that it looks complete and, as it were, solid. There is the possibility of holding virtual meetings, collaboration with documents, etc. Almost all package services can be deployed on their servers if there is a need to protect data on their own.



The office suite from the Cloud allows you to create and edit documents in familiar formats, and you can then open them in Microsoft products as well as its analogs.

All these products inside the same package are connected within the same interface, and it turned out pretty good. In any case, I did not immediately find what to criticize for.

Well, everything seems to be like that - except for the three indicated platforms, there is nothing more to choose from; if I am mistaken, correct it in comments.

Yes, of course, there are also crafts like AlterOffice, but,as shown earlier , it's just LibreOffice with a different logo. And they managed to push it into the Register of domestic software.

What else?

There are also individual products of domestic developers in the Register that can be used by state-owned companies. These are, for example, messengers “Roschat”, “Dialogue” and Xpress. But these are just messengers, while large organizations prefer to use a single platform, which includes several directly related services.

In addition, the integration of different services into a single unit inside the state-owned company will fly a penny, and in the current crisis, almost no one can afford the extra expenses.

It turns out that when CommuniGate Pro is removed from the Registry, state-owned companies will need to choose from a very small number of solutions. In fact, the situation is “you, me, yes, you and I”.