The announced sanctions may create problems — for example, deprive access to a number of important services and programs — but they cannot turn into a complete technological blockade at the software level for Russia. This opinion was expressed by Russian software developers.
Sanctions measures will have a negative impact not only on ordinary users, but also on business and the IT sphere. However, experts believe that there will be no fatal outcome of events, because there are enough developments in Russia that can act as an alternative to most of the Western software. <url> writes about this.
As Boris Popov, Director of Business Development at Vinteo, noted, it is difficult to make any forecasts, but based on today’s information, he does not rule out that American companies will begin to revoke licenses to operate basic software in Russia, including Microsoft and Zoom. In this scenario, it is clear that Russian companies will have to urgently look for an alternative — to purchase domestic analogues of operating systems and basic software.
Ayrat Mustafin, CEO of Liberum Navitas, a developer of cloud services, holds a similar opinion.
He believes that the list of companies that can stop their work or restrict it in Russia is large. But first of all we are talking about the services of global corporations in the field of communication and data storage. These are social networks, professional video conferencing services, and cloud services.
“Users of almost any foreign provider of cloud services — Amazon, Google, in a certain sense Meta – are potentially at risk. At the application level, the unavailability of Zoom and similar services may be critical,” Mustafin said.
Director of the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC) Sergey Plugotarenko, in turn, admitted that problems will arise with the use of Western social networks, messengers and video hosting services: Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube. The same goes for cloud services. He recalled that some foreign companies may stop working in Russia on their own, without state regulation. Plugotarenko believes that such measures will have an even greater effect on the IT sphere than “centralized” sanctions.