Exit of tech giants on the verge of creating a Russian IT crisis

Major players in international business almost lined up to get out of Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.

This also includes the technology sector, and one of the biggest problems facing the Russian industry has become one of the biggest problems facing the Russian industry, according to reports. Bloomberg.

Siemens withdrew

Siemens, for example, is among the players who have completed work in what was once one of the company’s largest markets.

– Locating software for computer-aided production has become a big problem that will slow down the development process. Russian programs in this area are much weaker, and the need is urgent, says Russian analyst Elena Semenovskaya at IDC to the news agency.

– But the approach so far is to rely on piracy and old copies, which is a dead end and unsustainable, she said.

– Cannot access tokens

Foreign programs are often baked directly into industrial machines and control high-precision processes.

“Manufacturers are vigilant about their intellectual property rights, and in many cases they will not give customers access to the codes needed to run the plants,” said Sergei Dunayev, director of information at Russian steel giant Severstal.

In steel production, which can require precision within a few hundred millimeters of high-value products, even slight deviations can render them worthless, he continues.

Spare parts in the database?

All industries struggle with these problems, not least oil and gas, where the share of Russian-developed software, according to the relevant Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin, is only 5-10 percent.

According to Bloomberg, the situation is aggravated by the fact that oil producers are forced to extract oil from hard-to-reach reserves – which requires more advanced technology.

Dunayev has previously called on Russian industrialists to work together to create a database of spare parts in case critical programs fail.

Russian office solution

The news agency further notes that the Russian industry is not alone in experiencing the IT crisis, and notes that Microsoft and SAP will finish updates and deliver services to Russian companies in August. This will make the broad business community and the provision of public services vulnerable to security breaches.

The Ukraine war has also destroyed Russia’s 5G ambitions, and it’s not that new systems will appear tomorrow. Dmitry Komissarov, the creator of MyOffice, points out to Bloomberg that it took nearly ten years to develop the Russian variant of Microsoft Office.

It is necessary to look at what we have and identify the solutions that are missing – and thus begin to develop them, he says.