Photo source: KommersantThe costs of cloud services for some domestic software developers have doubled or more. The reason is the “carpet bombing” of Roskomnadzor, carried out in relation to entire pools of IP addresses in Russia. As for the increase in costs, this problem has affected mainly small startups that have been forced to switch to the Russian counterparts Google Cloud and Amazon. But large and medium-sized development companies have not felt significant changes.
Blocking Telegram has led to a 100% increase in the cost of cloud services, and, as a result, an increase in the cost of domestic software. About this “Kommersant”
said the general director of the company “Equio” Alexei Vagin. He told that among small companies, those who are abroad, but developing cloud products for Russia, suffered the most. Before the blocking of the messenger began, such companies used Russian cloud services only to store personal customer data, general information was hosted on servers of foreign services like Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.
After April 16, some IT-companies were in unfavorable conditions for them, since many IP-addresses of foreign cloud services were blocked in the territory of the Russian Federation. The developers had no choice but to switch to the use of more expensive domestic “clouds” for storing the data of their customers. “For example, a fairly simple server configuration for a cloud of 30–40 thousand active users in the Google Cloud Platform costs $ 330, that is, about 21 thousand rubles. per month, while the same configuration on the Russian provider will cost 64 thousand rubles. per month, ”says Vagin.
According to Vagin, for “Equio” the expenses in connection with the blocking of the messenger increased by at least 3 million rubles. in year. Vladimir Shcherbakov, general director of Teachbase, said that his business had already suffered financial losses of at least 1 million rubles. At the same time, startups that are not based on cloud services, bypassed the “price increase problem”.
Representatives of the company Hot-WiFi said that due to the current situation, they also had to switch from a foreign Digital Ocean to a Russian Selectel, paying a one-time payment of 300 thousand rubles. for the purchase of cloud servers, additional staff time and relocation itself. After a month and a half, the server costs have not increased. By the way, despite the fact that many IP addresses of foreign cloud services are already unlocked, their users are in no hurry to come back because of the fear of re-blocking.
The secret of the survival of large and medium-sized businesses lies in the fact that such companies initially prefer to use only their servers. Only as a last resort, they decide to start working with third-party services, foreign or domestic. This was told by Director of Development for Trueconf Dmitry Odintsov. According to him, such developers use internal systems for communications, and therefore the risk of information leakage is much lower, and the side effects of Telegram blocking almost do not affect them.
A large association of software developers “Russoft” also reported that it did not suffer from locks. “We received information from some companies about the consequences of blocking, but they refused to discuss the details. In addition, blocking is more of a political issue. We are a branch association that operates in its own country in the interests of its members and is not a political organization, ”said a spokesman for Russoft.
Flexbby (a resident of Skolkovo) earlier estimated the potential losses for Russian companies from Telegram blocking at $ 1 billion, and Amazon and Google - about $ 940 million. According to the company, at the end of April 2018, more than 400 Russian companies suffered from failures in the work of data warehouses, business applications, artificial intelligence systems, payments, customer service and many others. All this can be called a "side effect" of locks. At the end of April, more than 18 million IP addresses were listed as blocked, with no relation to Telegram. By mid-June, their number had dropped to 3.79 million.