Form a client for yourself – Newspaper Kommersant No. 9 (7454) dated 01/19/2023

Innopolis University offered Russian IT developers to donate 20 million rubles each. to restart the specialized educational center. The funds should go, in particular, to the organization of courses to train employees of customer companies to work with domestic software. But market participants do not see the need for such projects, emphasizing their own shortage of specialists.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the presentations of the Innopolis University, sent to the participants of the industrial centers of competence (ICC) in the field of IT import substitution and centers of competence for the development of system-wide and applied software (CCR) in early January. The document contains a proposal to restart the Basic Educational Center in the areas of the digital economy (OOC), which was launched on the basis of Innopolis in 2021 to train the staff of the ICC and the CCR themselves.

For this, the university asks each member of the competence centers to invest 20 million rubles. The funds will be used for testing employees of customer companies, organizing courses for them on working with Russian software and software and hardware systems (PAK), as well as certification. Training of one employee in the possession of Russian software and PAK in Innopolis will cost 90 thousand rubles, follows from the presentation. How many employees of the company’s customers will be able to send for training is not specified, but it is noted that Innopolis plans to train 11 thousand people to work with Russian IT products annually and by 2024 form a base of certified specialists and users. The second university program involves marketing services (comprehensive support for promotion, services for protecting and registering rights to software, replicating products, placing software on software marketplaces), its cost will be 10 million rubles.

According to Kommersant’s interlocutors involved in the development of the Central Committee of the Kyrgyz Republic and the ICC, the Innopolis initiative was discussed at the Ministry of Digital Development and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The purpose of the design and educational office of the ICC and the Central Committee of the Kyrgyz Republic is to increase the readiness of employees of participating companies, as well as developers, to switch to Russian solutions, Kommersant was told in the latter. In Mintsifra and “Innopolis” did not answer “Kommersant”.

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin instructed the government to create specialized competence centers in June 2022 to replace IT solutions from foreign developers who left the Russian market. At the end of December, within the framework of the TCC and the CCR, the government approved the road maps for NOPO (“New General System Software”) and NIPO (“New Industrial Software”), the implementation of which is expected until 2030 (see “Kommersant” dated December 22, 2022) . According to the Ministry of Digital Development of November 2022, a total of 162 projects were approved within the ICC, and 35 within the CCR. Among the developers are Rostelecom, Kaspersky Lab, 1C, New Cloud Technologies, VK and other companies that will invest in projects in general about 70 billion rubles.

The problem of customers working with Russian software really exists, the developers admit. “Right now, most market participants, including the public sector and large businesses, are switching to domestic solutions, investing huge amounts of money in this, because they had to abandon foreign solutions that have been working with for decades,” says Lyudmila Bogatyreva, head of Polycode’s digital solutions department. In her opinion, an investment of 20 million rubles. for training customers in building the right import substitution strategy will be justified.

But the interlocutor of Kommersant in one of the companies participating in the centers of competence doubts the need for a customer program: “The amount for training is too high, and the issue of a shortage of personnel for the industry itself is more acute.” Russian IT companies lack about 1 million specialists, backend and frontend developers, testers, analysts and cybersecurity specialists remain the most in demand, confirms Pavel Kalyakin, CEO of New Cloud Technologies (developer of the My Office office suite). The situation in the Russian IT market continues to be difficult, agrees Elena Nikisheva, HR director of ITentika: “The outflow of personnel from the country and the need to make quick decisions to create analogues of foreign products are affecting.”

Tatyana Isakova