The Russian market of cloud services in monetary terms hardly occupies one percent of the total cloud revenues in the world. However, from time to time there are international players who declare their desire to compete for a place under the Russian sun. What to expect in 2019? Under the cut, the opinion of Konstantin Anisimov, CEO .
In 2019, the Dutch company Leaseweb announced its intention to provide services of public and private clouds, dedicated servers, collocation, content delivery networks (CDN) and information security in Russia. And this is despite the presence here of the largest international players (Alibaba, Huawei and IBM).
In 2018, the Russian cloud services market grew by 25% compared to 2017 and reached RUB 68,4 billion. The volume of the IaaS market (“infrastructure as a service”), according to various sources, ranged from 12 to 16 billion rubles. In 2019, the figures may be at the level of 15 to 20 billion rubles. Given that the volume of the global IaaS market in 2018 amounted to about $30 billion. Of these, almost half of the revenue comes from Amazon. Another 25% is occupied by the world's largest players (Google, Microsoft, IBM and Alibaba). The remaining share is accounted for by independent international players.
The future starts today
How promising is the cloud direction in Russian realities, and how can state protectionism help or hinder it? For example, you can oblige state-owned companies to completely abandon imported software solutions and equipment. On the other hand, such restrictions will hinder competition and put state-owned companies in deliberately unequal conditions with commercial structures. Today, especially in fintech, they compete at the level of technology. And if, for example, state-owned banks have to choose not the best technological solutions, but only those that have a Russian residence permit, any competing commercial bank will only have to clap their hands and watch how miraculously market share is won by itself.
At the rate The Russian market of cloud services in the coming years will grow by an average of 23% per year and by the end of 2022 may reach 155 billion rubles. Moreover, we not only import, but also export cloud services. The share of foreign customers in the revenues of domestic cloud providers is 5,1%, or RUB 2,4 billion, in the SaaS segment. Revenue in the Infrastructure as a Service segment (IaaS, servers, data storage, networks, operating systems in the cloud that customers use to deploy and run their own software solutions) foreign customers accounted for 2,2% last year, or 380 million rubles.
Actually, we have two multidirectional concepts for the development of the Russian market of cloud services. On the one hand, isolationism and the policy of complete import substitution of external services, and on the other hand, an open market and ambitions to conquer the world. Which of the strategies in Russia has the greatest prospects? I do not want to think that only the first.
What arguments do the supporters of dense “digital fences” have? National security, protection of the domestic market from international expansion and support for key local players. Everyone has an example of China with Alibaba Cloud. The state makes a lot of efforts to ensure that local guys remain out of competition in their country.
However, Chinese companies are not limited to domestic ambitions, and their experience shows that this is the most optimal strategy. Today, the Alibaba cloud is already the third in the world. Moreover, the Chinese are full of ambitions to dethrone Amazon and Microsoft. In fact, we are seeing the emergence of the Big Cloud Three.
Russia in the clouds
What are the chances for Russia to seriously and permanently appear on the world cloud map? There are many talented programmers and companies in the country that can offer a competitive product. Recently, new players with serious ambitions, such as Rostelecom, Yandex and Mail.ru, have joined the "cloud" race, having a decent technological potential. Moreover, I expect a real battle, of course, not between clouds as such, but between ecosystems. And here, not so much basic IaaS services will come to the fore, but new generations of cloud services - microservices, edge computing and serverless. After all, the basic IaaS service has become almost a "commodity" and only numerous additional cloud services will allow you to tightly bind the user to yourself. And the field of this future battle is the Internet of things, smart cities and smart, and in the near future already unmanned, cars.
What competitive advantages are Russian companies able to offer and do they have a future? Considering that the Russian market is one of the few in the world that has not given up under the pressure of Google and Amazon, then I believe that there are chances. Perhaps one of the best price / quality ratios of our education in the world, our closeness to Western culture, the accumulated experience of doing business, including international (after all, 30 years ago there was no such experience in principle), the emerging experience in creating world-class IT products (AmoCRM, Bitrix24, Veeam, Acronis, Dodo, Tinkoff, Cognitive - there are not so few of them anymore) - all these are the advantages that can help us in global competition. And the recent agreement between Yandex and Hyundai Motors on cooperation in the field of unmanned vehicles only adds to the confidence that Russian companies can and should fight for a significant piece of the global cloud pie.
The situation with the "landing" of global IT services in accordance with the requirements of national legislation also plays into the hands of Russian companies. National governments are not at all enthusiastic about the dominance of American services in their territories, and last year's record $5 billion fine against Google in Europe is a clear confirmation of this. The European GDPR or the Russian “Personal Data Storage Law”, for example, now have fairly clear requirements for where user data is stored. And this means that local services have certain preferences and even relatively small players will be able to compete with global companies due to their flexibility, ability to partner, adaptability and speed. The main thing is to set ourselves such tasks, to have ambitions not only to endlessly “defend” against global competition, but also to actively participate in it ourselves.
What do I personally expect from the cloud services market in Russia and Europe in 2019?
The most basic and primary thing is that we will continue to consolidate the market. And already from this fact, in fact, two trends follow.
First, technological. Consolidation will allow leading players to focus more on the development and implementation of new technologies in the clouds. In particular, my company is involved in the development of serverless computing technologies (serverless) and I know that in 2019 we will see quite a lot of such projects in different markets. The monopoly of the big three Amazon, Google and Microsoft in the provision of serverless computing services will begin to crumble and, I hope, Russian players will also take part in this.
Second, and perhaps even more important, consolidation sets an obvious clear course for the client, because market leaders are very good at this, and if you want to stay on the market, you need to follow its trends. The modern client needs not only technologically advanced cloud services, but also the quality of these services. Therefore, projects that manage to find a balance between their profitability and the deep interests of the customer have every chance of becoming successful. Product personification, convenience and simplicity are increasingly playing a key role. Cloud users want to understand what effect the service has on their business, why they should do it, and how to spend as little time and money on it as possible. The backyard of your product can be infinitely complex and technically advanced, but the use should be as simple and discreet as possible. Moreover, this trend goes even to "heavy" corporate services, where VMWare and other traditional guys have long ruled the ball. Now they obviously have to make room. And this is good for the industry, and most importantly, for customers.
Source: habr.com