How does a company fight software piracy, when the government of the country it’s working in is the biggest culprit?
That’s the problem facing Microsoft Ukraine CEO Nadiia Vasylieva, who says irresponsible Ukrainian officials are holding back IT development in the country – not just by engaging in software piracy, but by failing to see the potential of, and helping to foster, Ukraine’s high-tech development.
The answer, Vasylieva says during an interview with the Kyiv Post, is for the government to listen to the proposals of Microsoft and other IT companies.
“Three years ago, Microsoft was a bit fat and lazy – like a lot of other companies, Ukrainian and international, here in Ukraine,” Vasylieva said, adding that after the EuroMaidan Revolution the country’s IT firms have started doing more to develop Ukraine’s business conditions and government.
“In a tough environment, and we all have to change,” she said.
Avoiding meetings
Government offices make wide use of the Microsoft Office software suite and Microsoft’s Windows operating system, but most of this software is either stolen or counterfeit, according to Vasylieva.
In fact, ordinary Ukrainians are much more likely to pay for this software than their government, Vasylieva said.
In other countries, it’s usually the other way round. Ukraine has an 83-percent software piracy rate, which is mainly driven by the government, she said.
However, Vasylieva believes that nobody in Ukraine feels it’s their personal responsibility to solve the piracy problem, even though the money raised from sales of properly-licensed software could be reinvested in developing Ukraine’s IT market, increasing its capacities and capabilities.
“Over the last three years, we didn’t manage to find one person from the government who was ready to discuss the topic of piracy with us,” she said.
“The various ministers we tried to talk to were avoiding meeting with Microsoft, because they understood that than we would ask questions about antipiracy measures,” she went on, pointing out that Microsoft was not asking the government to pay up for the bootlegged software immediately, and that the company does not intend to sue the Ukrainian government. Yet.
“But patience always runs out,” Vasylieva said.
Data storage
Microsoft, with its arm Azure, is currently one of the biggest providers of cloud computing services – roughly at the same level as Amazon and Google. And its cloud services are becoming more and more popular among the world’s governments – using a network of remote servers on the internet to manage data can save them billions of dollars.
Western countries are already catching on to the new possibilities: According to IBM, adopting the cloud could cut U.S. government application development costs by as much as $20.5 billion a year, or 25 percent of the federal government’s IT budget. Meanwhile, the U.K. set up its G-Cloud, an initiative to simplify procurement by public-sector bodies, back in 2012.
While Microsoft has already started providing clouds solutions in the U.K. and the United States, parliamentarians in Ukraine seem in no hurry to get the legislation necessary for cloud solutions onto the books. The Verkhovna Rada received a bill on government regulations on cloud computing at the start of March 2016. Since then it has come through only one reading.
One of the lawmakers’ main concerns is that storing government data in a foreign country could pose a security risk – a concern heightened by the fact that war is still raging in the east of the country.
But Microsoft’s Vasylieva thinks it could benefit not only Microsoft, but the whole country if Ukraine’s institutions embrace the new technology. For the U.S. giant and other cloud providers, it is lucrative to have such a big customer, while for the government cloud storing means transparency, efficiency and reduced spending.
Any sensitive data, such as Defense Ministry classified information, can be stored separately, Vasylieva said, with less valuable, but still cumbersome human resources databases or property information safely going to the cloud.
Microsoft’s distributed network of datacenters will also ensure the government’s data is secure, or recoverable if a data storage facility is damaged by a natural disaster, according to Vasylieva.
“We never keep all the information on a single server – it’s split up. We can bring it back even if an earthquake damages one server.”
And even if some data is lost, if the government has a contract with a cloud provider, it can sue for damages.
“The question of the government using cloud computing is not the one of ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ It’s the question of ‘when?’” Vasylieva said.
“Solving all the problems we have, from the legal side and the technological side – this is the best way for Ukraine to speed up reform and transparency in government.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov can be found at [email protected].
