State cloud is increasing its client base

The Ministry of Digital Development proposes to extend until the end of 2024 the experiment on the transfer of information systems of federal executive authorities to the state cloud, allowing regional authorities to participate in the pilot. In the apparatus of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, the initiative is explained by the need to consolidate and optimize the use of state computing resources. The situation may be due to problems in the supply of “heavy” IT equipment that arose due to sanctions, and the interest of departments and subjects of the Russian Federation caused by them in the use of free federal capacities.

The Ministry of Digital Development has developed a draft resolution on the extension of the experiment on the transfer of information systems and information resources of the federal executive authority, the Central Election Commission, state non-budgetary funds and the company “Single customer in the construction industry” to the state single cloud platform (GEOP, state cloud) from December 30, 2022 to December 31, 2024 . The document, posted on the regulation.gov.ru portal, also provides for the expansion of pilot participants at the expense of Rosvodresursy, Rosmolodezh, Rosobrnadzor, Rosprirodnadzor and Rossotrudnichestvo, as well as regional authorities and state institutions.

An experiment to transfer the work of departments from foreign services to GEOP has been carried out since 2019. The state cloud is an infrastructure foundation that provides computing resources and ensures data security (mainly on Russian hardware and software). At the same time, due to the use of a cloud platform, departments save on maintaining their own IT infrastructure.

The office of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko explained to Kommersant that the extension of the experiment is necessary to consolidate and optimize the use of the state’s existing computing resources. In turn, the Ministry of Digital Development announced that now 21 federal executive authorities are participating in the pilot. “Since the experiment shows a high efficiency in the use of computing resources, as well as a high level of service quality, new federal departments and a number of regions expressed their desire to participate in it,” the ministry noted. In addition, time is needed to work out and debug new services on the GEOP infrastructure (for example, to ensure information security, basic configuration and maintenance of virtual machines, etc.). The department noted that the format of the experiment allows you to quickly respond to the requests of the participants, however, the development of the regulatory framework goes beyond the previous terms of the experiment. At the same time, Mintsifry does not experience problems with computing power.

According to Alexander Sysoev, Head of Infrastructure Solutions at CROC IT Company, the extension of the experiment may be due both to the changed situation on the market – there are fewer available equipment, delivery times have increased, prices have increased, and to changes in the requirements of future users of this resource. The GEOP platform is well prepared technologically, Kommersant was told in the press service of the Rostelecom-DPC company: “Now in the GEOP, the participants in the experiment are provided with 16 thousand virtual processor cores, more than 100 TB of RAM, more than 4.2 pb of disk space.” And this infrastructure makes it possible to fully meet the needs of GEOP.

Recall that earlier the Ministry of Digital Development offered the regions to transfer their GIS to the infrastructure of the state cloud just because of possible problems with the supply of “heavy” equipment to the Russian Federation (servers, data storage systems, equipment for data processing centers) in connection with sanctions – it is easier to provide GEOP with resources , and they will be used more efficiently (see Kommersant of May 13 for more details). Probably, the growth in demand for GEOP capacities is explained by the fact that the ministry managed to convince counterparties of the rationality of such an approach.

It should be noted that the state cloud is now also one of the services of the single digital platform Gostekh. The experiment on the creation, translation and development of state information systems and their components at Gostekh was previously extended from May 31 to December 31, 2022, the use of the platform will become mandatory from 2024 (see Kommersant dated March 29 for more details). Mr. Chernyshenko’s office assured yesterday that the extension of the experiment with GEOP will not affect the timing of the transition to Gostekh. “This will not affect the current tasks of providing resources for Gostech,” the ministry also told Kommersant.

Venera Petrova, Julia Silence