Extended software group – Newspaper Kommersant No. 58 (7503) of 04/05/2023
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More than a year after Adobe left Russia, large companies and regional authorities continue to look for ways to renew licenses for the company’s products and similar software, Kommersant found. Some are renewing existing licenses, while others are ready to enter into new agreements in order to gain access to software that import substitution has not yet reached the hands of. Active demand may encourage foreign vendors to establish sublicensing channels so as not to lose access to the Russian market, experts believe.
“Kommersant” studied the data of electronic trading platforms for the purchase of licenses for foreign services used in the preparation of visual materials – in particular, on Adobe’s Creative Cloud. Since the beginning of the year, a number of large companies have been looking for ways to renew subscriptions. So, the retailer Magnit in March announced a request for proposals for the extension of licenses for Adobe software until May 8, 2024. BCS and the Ak Bars structure (Ak Bars Digital Technologies) were looking for counterparties that could provide an extension of the subscription to Adobe. On April 3, Krasnodar Airport announced a request for prices to renew licenses for Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Lightroom for a year starting from May 1. At the beginning of the year, the authorities also took care of renewing subscriptions: for example, on January 20–24, the Murmansk city administration was looking for a supplier of an Adobe Creative Cloud corporate subscription that ended on January 31.
Adobe, like many other software developers, after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, announced a halt in sales in the Russian Federation, and also disconnected state media from subscriptions. The decision, in particular, affected newspaper publishers, since Adobe InDesign is considered a standard layout program (see Kommersant dated March 16, 2022). A number of sellers on Russian marketplaces have begun selling flash drives with pirated software packages from Adobe (see Kommersant, January 10).
Among other creative services for which applications were collected or saved is the Figma vector editor. So, on April 3, the Moscow Credit Bank (MKB) announced a request for prices for the service. The explanations to the applicants said that it was a question of renewing the license. In March, Magnit also collected offers to renew the subscription to Figma. Magnit told Kommersant that Adobe and Figma are used in “supporting functions and do not affect the core business.” Other companies and organizations did not respond to inquiries.
A number of Russian software vendors continue to sell licenses to renew Adobe corporate subscriptions. Softline explained to Kommersant that this is happening under an agreement with the vendor. Nikita Korchagin, head of the Graphics Software division at Softline, added that renewals peak in October-November.
There is no import substitution in such products yet: the state focused on the needs of industry and software for photo and video processing was considered secondary, notes Nikolay Komlev from the Association of Computer and Information Technology Enterprises: “The priority was operating systems, office suites, DBMS, enterprise management systems.” He believes that there is “nothing criminal” in buying Adobe products and other “non-process-critical” software. There are no sanctions restrictions on the supply of Adobe software: they are classified under the export control group EAR99 as everyday consumer goods.
Organizations can purchase renewal subscriptions to Creative Cloud both because of the real need for updates and cloud services, and because of the desire to legally use the programs, says Dmitry Sokolov, director of the Association of Software Suppliers. He admits that software producers themselves will try to organize a sublicensing channel through Kazakhstan and other countries neighboring the Russian Federation: “Some companies are already considering this option, and some are starting to actively establish a channel.” Mr. Sokolov, however, considers the use of cloud software from foreign companies risky: “I would recommend transferring workflows to services located in Russia.”
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