January 4, 2016 at 08:30Another rise in the price of Microsoft products makes you think about abandoning software for an American company
Since 2016, Microsoft has raised software prices in Russia. Microsoft Office packages, Office 365 and other products - rose by 19%. Prices for cloud services for corporate customers increased by 25%. True, the prices of boxed versions of the Windows operating system remained the same.
“ Microsoft Office is a work tool for hundreds of thousands of people. Even if it suddenly rises in price quite noticeably, it is almost impossible to refuse it, because attempts to switch to some alternative free packages were made many times in my experience, and in 99% of cases, organizations still returned back to Microsoft Office, because the losses were still more expensive than a license, ” said"Kommersant" editor of the direction "IT and innovation" of the portal Bankir.ru Sergey Villanov.
But is it possible to abandon Microsoft software not now, but in the near future?
The announcement of the MyOffice cloud package developed by New Cloud Technologies has become one of the most notable events in the Russian IT industry over the past year. This product is unlikely to compete with the foreign giant, and it is not easy to compare them. As he writesCNews, while this is a "comparison of incomparable": the functionality of Microsoft Office Online is currently much wider than that of MyOffice. The latter has only the most necessary for editing documents. Microsoft Office Online is more convenient to work with, it supports different browsers and is faster.
However, New Cloud Technologies announced plans to sell MyOffice solutions 30-40% cheaper than the market leader. True, at the same time, the cost of the new product is not compared with approximately the same functionality of the cloud-based Office 365, but with the permanent Microsoft Office Standard license for corporate users.
Last time, prices for Microsoft products rose in February 2015. Then the price of software increased by 15-30%.
The increase in software prices is due to economic changes in the country, Pavel Betsis, president of Microsoft Russia, explained to Kommersant earlier.
Antivirus software developed abroad can also go up in price. An increase in prices for it can reach 25%, says analyst of Finam investment holding Leonid Delitsyn. According to the expert, domestic software manufacturers will gradually raise prices.
Since early January, a law has come into force to limit public procurement of foreign software. The law obliging government agencies to submit written arguments for the purchase of foreign software from January 1, 2016 was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of June.
Starting January 1, 2016, the state customer will have to argue its choice in favor of foreign software if its Russian counterparts are in a specially created register of domestic software. The software should belong to the state, municipality, Russian non-profit organization or company with a share of Russian beneficiaries of more than 50% - this is the main criterion that allows us to consider software domestic.
On December 25, Megamind wrote that the Ministry of Communications suggested introducing price preferences of 15% for state purchases (tenders, auctions, quotation requests). The exemption, as conceived by the Ministry of Communications, should extend to the purchase of 22 types of products, including application and system software (software).
For the most part, domestic developments are still inferior to foreign software, the head of the Internet Development Institute German Klimenko is sure:
“There, all the software is put in order, with workflow, with service, with support, and we are just learning. If this is all to be implemented, we must carefully watch that our companies are not at a disadvantage, because if there is something western cheaper, that there is no history when we buy Russian at any cost. Everything is fine with software for the Internet, with an average corporate office - “1C”, in my opinion, looks very decent. Very bad with software that services the largest companies. ”
“ Microsoft Office is a work tool for hundreds of thousands of people. Even if it suddenly rises in price quite noticeably, it is almost impossible to refuse it, because attempts to switch to some alternative free packages were made many times in my experience, and in 99% of cases, organizations still returned back to Microsoft Office, because the losses were still more expensive than a license, ” said"Kommersant" editor of the direction "IT and innovation" of the portal Bankir.ru Sergey Villanov.
But is it possible to abandon Microsoft software not now, but in the near future?
The announcement of the MyOffice cloud package developed by New Cloud Technologies has become one of the most notable events in the Russian IT industry over the past year. This product is unlikely to compete with the foreign giant, and it is not easy to compare them. As he writesCNews, while this is a "comparison of incomparable": the functionality of Microsoft Office Online is currently much wider than that of MyOffice. The latter has only the most necessary for editing documents. Microsoft Office Online is more convenient to work with, it supports different browsers and is faster.
However, New Cloud Technologies announced plans to sell MyOffice solutions 30-40% cheaper than the market leader. True, at the same time, the cost of the new product is not compared with approximately the same functionality of the cloud-based Office 365, but with the permanent Microsoft Office Standard license for corporate users.
Last time, prices for Microsoft products rose in February 2015. Then the price of software increased by 15-30%.
The increase in software prices is due to economic changes in the country, Pavel Betsis, president of Microsoft Russia, explained to Kommersant earlier.
Antivirus software developed abroad can also go up in price. An increase in prices for it can reach 25%, says analyst of Finam investment holding Leonid Delitsyn. According to the expert, domestic software manufacturers will gradually raise prices.
Since early January, a law has come into force to limit public procurement of foreign software. The law obliging government agencies to submit written arguments for the purchase of foreign software from January 1, 2016 was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of June.
Starting January 1, 2016, the state customer will have to argue its choice in favor of foreign software if its Russian counterparts are in a specially created register of domestic software. The software should belong to the state, municipality, Russian non-profit organization or company with a share of Russian beneficiaries of more than 50% - this is the main criterion that allows us to consider software domestic.
On December 25, Megamind wrote that the Ministry of Communications suggested introducing price preferences of 15% for state purchases (tenders, auctions, quotation requests). The exemption, as conceived by the Ministry of Communications, should extend to the purchase of 22 types of products, including application and system software (software).
For the most part, domestic developments are still inferior to foreign software, the head of the Internet Development Institute German Klimenko is sure:
“There, all the software is put in order, with workflow, with service, with support, and we are just learning. If this is all to be implemented, we must carefully watch that our companies are not at a disadvantage, because if there is something western cheaper, that there is no history when we buy Russian at any cost. Everything is fine with software for the Internet, with an average corporate office - “1C”, in my opinion, looks very decent. Very bad with software that services the largest companies. ”