In order to abide by Vladimir Putin, Russian President’s call on its people to stop using the foreign tech platforms, Moscow is seeking homegrown alternative in order to ditch Microsoft email.
They intend to have a replacement for Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server on not less than 6, 000 computers with what they call MyOffice that is created by New Cloud Technologies.
This move by Moscow is coming after a law on IT procurement was given by government in January urging that its own corporations and public authorities should first of all check locally for hardware before going to buy from foreign companies.
Artem Yermolaev, Moscow’s head of IT, said that the MyOffice can be sent out to 600, 000 computers with the possibility of Office and Windows to be replaced after the move.
The country’s capital Exchange and Outlook will be handled by Rostelecom, a state owned carrier that has already made switches from Oracle to PostgreSQL in the open-source database area.
However, these moves are not without challenges since the Russian organisations are yet to have competitive operating and databases systems. Another thing that the media is reporting is that 3-fourth of the money that the country spends of software is spent on imports alone.
Rostelcom in August took a giant step to move to the services of its egovernment from Oracle to PostgreSQL so that the state government does not go against the law that warn on reliance on foreign software and licensing.
In what seem to be like what China did when they made restrictions for the use of Windows by the authorities of government, Putin’s aim seems to help local developers get more aid and promotion for the products as well as for security reasons.
The country spends not less than $300 million on buying foreign software which is one of the major reasons that the country is seeking to create restrictions.
