Software wants to go abroad

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In October, the RUSSOFT Association presented a draft roadmap for the development of exports of Russian IT solutions to the head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksut Shadayev (available from the RSpectr editorial office).

The association expects that the document will be reviewed by the Russian government in November, said RUSSOFT President Valentin Makarov: “Then government instructions should be issued, and work on implementing its measures will begin.”

Valentin Makarov reported that the first stage of the roadmap implementation will require funding of at least 600 million rubles. According to him, this is definitely enough to start pilots that content writing service could demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of this project.

Among the projects within the roadmap:

creation of IT hubs in countries of presence to provide jobs, co-working spaces, and infrastructure for accommodating Russian companies;
provision of subsidies and loans to Russian IT organizations in the currency of friendly and neutral states, received not into the accounts of Russian legal entities;




attracting foreign offices of domestic system integrators to implement the “Made in Russia” promotion program in host countries;
co-financing of costs for adaptation and technical support of solutions in foreign markets;
development and preparation of intergovernmental agreements with the aim of organizing the work of intergovernmental commissions in the field of information technology.
For successful export, it is necessary to offer foreign partners not only a product, but also a full range of services – services related to software, assistance with training specialists to work with it, says Lev Matveyev, Chairman of the Board of Directors of SearchInform. “The roadmap for export development will allow the entire IT industry to move forward,” he said.

DON'T BE A CATCH-UP

According to Valentin Makarov, the main task is to make the supply of domestic IT solutions one of the priorities of Russian exports in general, and also to transfer the industry from the category of a service provider to the category of a product supplier. This will open up broader prospects for programmers. The fact is that, according to current regulations, the state can support the export of goods, not services, while IT and software are services, he noted.

Valentin Makarov, RUSSOFT:

– Loans, insurance, government guarantees and much more are unavailable. How, for example, can we enter the Zambian market if we cannot give them a loan to buy our product?

Lev Matveyev called on domestic programmers not to play catch-up, not to work for the European and American markets or copy the solutions they have created, but to create their own, no less, and even more effective ones.

Moreover, in his opinion,

Digital attachés should be motivated by a percentage of the deal

Such a specialist could receive a reward of 1-2% of the contract amount that a Russian IT company concludes on a foreign market through his mediation.

Let us recall that in order to ensure the competitiveness of Russian developers' products in foreign markets, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Digital Development have jointly created a digital attaché service. It will begin operating in 17 countries by the end of 2022.

Sergey Rezontov, CEO of IBS InfiniSoft, in turn, emphasized that IT specialists would like the state to provide them with information about the markets they intend to enter. First of all, these are the markets of the EAEU, Asian countries and ASEAN. "Statistics, analytics. So that there is interaction between our departments and the ministries of these countries, so that doors on the other side open for us," said Sergey Rezontov.

SALES ABROAD

The volume of IT exports from the Russian Federation is about 10 billion dollars per year. About 50% of this volume is IT products, and another 50% is services and developments, Sergey Rezontov reported.

As Igor Orellana Ursua, technical and executive director of SiSoft Development, told RSpectr, the company is currently actively working on entering the global market with its software.

Igor Orellana Ursua, SiSoft Development:

– We are planning expansion into friendly countries: the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus region. These are promising markets.

The press service of SiSoft also reported to RSpectr that the company is entering the markets of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.