Red Hat is now in Russia: “You need to be closer to the client”
Suddenly, he was among those invited to a press conference on the official opening of the Red Hat representative office in Russia. The event took place on October 13 at the Renaissance-Moscow Hotel and, apart from small overlays, it was organized at a fairly high level. Honestly, I thought that the press conference would be boring and prim, but I was mistaken. Under the Habrkat, a description of everything that happened at the press conference will be diluted with my comments (in italics). I apologize in advance for the quality of the photos - I shot the phone on the camera.The official press conference was called “Opening a Red Hat Representative Office in Moscow and Appointing Sergey Bugrin to the Position of Red Hat Business Development Director in Russia and the CIS.” At first, Werner Knoblich, vice president and general manager of EMEA at Red Hat, addressed with a welcoming speech. He said that this was not the first time in Russia and was very glad that the opening of a full-fledged Red Hat representative office coincided with government initiatives to develop open source software. Werner hopes that Red Hat, for its part, will also be able to contribute to the development of Russian software development companies.
Werner visits Russia almost every year, which is quite common for the vice president of Red Hat. For example, on the sidelines they said that Knoblich’s trips were scheduled at least six months in advance, so his visits were not spontaneous visits, but an indicator of a long and active study of the Russian market. By the way, Russia has become the 12th European country where a full-fledged representation of Red Hat is open.
Then Sergey Bugrin, head of the Russian representative office of Red Hat, was introduced. He said that the expansion of presence in Russia and the CIS is in line with the overall corporate strategy of Red Hat. The board of directors of Red Hat promised to closely monitor the performance and results of the Russian office. By the way, there is no office yet - Sergey is the only Red Hat employee in Russia, although a change in this situation is planned in the medium term. :-)
Sergey Bugrin is saying something (Werner is sitting at the left of the table).
Later, answering questions, Bugrin said that the official opening of the representative office occurs 2 months after the first news appeared in the media, because it took time to approve work plans and all approvals. Well, I think that some of our journalists are in a hurry and are ready to write any
Then Sergey said that despite the fact that the official representative office is opening only now, Red Hat products and services in Russia have been available for quite some time. Moreover, a rather strong affiliate network has developed. There are reliable partners and valuable customers. Well, and then these very partners and clients spoke.
As one of the clients was invited Nikolai Egorov, representative of the MICEX . He talked about the fact that since the mid-90s the exchange has been working on UNIX solutions, but “grew” from them a couple of years ago and performance problems began to appear. Following the recommendations of Western colleagues, it was decided to migrate from UNIX to RHEL. Preparations for complete migration took about two years. During this time, the results were "fundamentally different" from what they had "before." Nikolay noted that the presence of one expandable platform, combining both usability and productivity, was a decisive factor in deciding on migration.
Not surprisingly, the MICEX was invited as a client. The financial sector is one of the most important areas for Red Hat. Almost all major, global exchanges operate on Red Hat solutions, and in addition, products are popular in the banking sector. After all, it is precisely for companies in the financial market that low cost and stable operation are extremely important. And reasonable price (relative to UNIX) and reliability are the key benefits of Red Hat.
As a partner from Russian companies, Arkady Tagiev from NCPR was invited. This company is the master distributor of Red Hat and, among other things, is assembling the MSVSfera distribution - a version of RHEL specially adapted to Russian security requirements.
Everyone probably heard about MSVS from VNIINS - the first Linux widely used in the public sector. This is from the same series, but a product that was created in conjunction with Red Hat, and not “assembled on the knee”. Simply put, this is for those who want to use RHEL to process personal data and other applications required by the competent authorities.
Handout nishtyaki - pen, keychain, daddy with papers and CD.
As another important partner in the Russian market, Denis Sosnovtsev, a well-known person among Linuxoids, was invited. He led the Linux Competency Center at IBM in the early 2000s. Denis said that Red Hat is a long-standing, reliable IBM partner worldwide and that, in Russia, they have also been cooperating for a long time and productively. Among the next common initiatives are cooperation in the field of “cloud computing”, work in the Open Virtualization Alliance consortium and promotion of KVM.
By the way, I recently wrote about the Open Virtualization Alliance . It is clear why Denis Sosnovtsev was invited - Bugrin himself worked until recently in IBM and partnership with the IBM level corporation is simply necessary for Red Hat if they do not want to lose in the “ war against VMware ”.
Then again the word passed to Werner and he told something about the company's strategy - now it relies on three products. The first is RHEL, which has stable demand, the second is JBoss middleware, whose sales are growing very actively after the events around OpenJDK, Java and Oracle. Well, the third is RHEV and cloud computing, for which Red Hat has high hopes ( I wrote about this too ). All these products are interconnected and form a reliable foundation for harmonious growth. Werner said Red Hat has very good global profit margins (something about a 30% increase over the past quarter), while other companies' revenues are declining.
When Red Hat employees were asked about specific sales figures for Russia, they avoided answering, explaining that the figures were better taken from official reports (and they were printed out and put into each “daddy”), because even the best results can be misinterpreted, which will affect the stock price. It is curious that over the past few months (I have not been constantly monitoring), Red Hat's capitalization has grown by almost 10%, which seems to me very good.
Werner Knoblich, after the end of the press conference.
In addition, Werner paid great attention to cloud computing. He said that virtualization should be cheap ( I also wrote about this) He also said that today cloud computing is mainly built on open source precisely because of the lack of large investments in software. Mention was made of both the IBM public cloud and the recent Gluster purchase.
It is significant that the rollup advertising Red Hat cloud solutions was put in the most prominent place - behind the speakers (there were two more, but they stood in the corners). I think that the bet on cloud computing is not in vain, because Red Hat receives most of the profit from companies wishing to leave vendor lock-in, and soon there will be a lot of these in the cloud market . ;-)
Among the main priorities of the company, Werner named the following: "Do not forget where Red Hat came from," "Give the user the opportunity to choose," "Do not leave customers face-to-face with their problems." Knoblich said that up to 90% of the money earned in a particular region remains in it and goes to the development of the local market to partners (Red Hat receives about 60% of sales through the affiliate network), invests in local development centers, etc. . Almost 90% of buyers return to renew their subscription and / or buy new products.
As a general impression:Thus, Red Hat does not come “to a clean field," an existing system already exists in Russia - the products are localized and certified, there are both technological and business partners. And among the main tasks of the Russian office are such as "to be closer to the client" and "support their partners in complex projects."
ps: related links Red Hat opened in Russia Red Hat opens a representative office in Russia A representative office of Red Hat opens in Moscow