According to Bloomberg, in August 2022 (without a specific date), the American company Microsoft and the developer of SAP business process management solutions will completely close access to Russian corporate customers to receive their new software products and update current software, including security patches.
These actions can lead to the emergence of unpatched potential vulnerabilities in corporate software of all customers, including small and medium businesses and the public sector. Many state-owned companies and representatives of large businesses have already begun, as part of import substitution, to switch to domestic Linux-based operating systems (Ubuntu and other free distributions, Astra Linux, ALT Linux, RED OS) and office suites (MyOffice, P7-Office, LibreOffice, WPS Office, OpenOffice). This process is slow and requires additional training for users and system administrators.
Technically, Microsoft's blocking and restrictions should not affect ordinary users, but they can no longer download Windows distributions without using VPN services. The publication's experts believe that in the future Microsoft may impose full restrictions on all users from the Russian Federation.
According to CNews, so far Russian corporate clients have no problems getting updates for Microsoft products. Officially, Microsoft has not yet announced restrictions for non-sanctioned Russian customers.
In early March, Microsoft suspended the sale of goods, software, services and the provision of any new services in Russia.
On June 8, Microsoft announced that the company is reducing operations in Russia.
On June 23, Microsoft announced the gradual reduction of its business in Russia.
Since the beginning of June, Russian users have been faced with the fact that it is impossible to download utilities, Office distributions and ISO images of Windows 10 and 11 from the official website of the company. You can download them only through a VPN. Microsoft has not officially announced the ban and blocking of services in the Russian Federation. In the Microsoft technical support service, one of the operators explained in a response to the user that “according to the government order, it is impossible to download or install any company files from the territory of Russia and Belarus.” The technical support employee did not explain what kind of order he was talking about, and how it was related to sanctions against ordinary users. Microsoft also blocked the installation of updates for Windows 11 insiders in Russia. You must use a VPN to install Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25145.
On June 1, SAP announced that it would lay off all employees in the company's divisions in Russia and Belarus, as well as pay them the necessary severance pay. On assurance of SAP, each employee of the company falling under dismissal can apply for a position in subdivisions of SAP abroad. The SAP personnel restructuring program in the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus will begin in June and end by the end of 2022. All SAP offices in these countries will be closed.
On April 19, 2022 SAP announced that it finally leaves Russia. The developer of business process management solutions will completely stop working with all Russian customers and support local versions of their products. Users of cloud services will be given a choice: to upload data, delete them or transfer them to a server outside of Russia, but even in the latter case, SAP will not work with them after the subscription expires. Although SAP is ending support and maintenance of its on-premises products, customers will continue to use previously purchased and installed software.
In early March, SAP stopped business in the Russian Federation due to sanctions and, in addition, suspended all sales of services and products to customers from the Russian Federation and Belarus. In the Russian Federation, SAP was used by Sberbank, Gazprom and many small and medium-sized businesses. SAP offered enterprise resource management (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), production management (ERP Production Planning, MES, EAM, CAD) systems.
SAP analogues and alternatives - 1C: ERP Enterprise Management, Sail, DeloPro, COINCAP, EPROMIS business suite, ERPNext, dia$par, Galaxy ERP, TURBO ERP.
List of analogues or alternatives to replace Microsoft services and software (suggest more options in the comments):
Microsoft Sharepoint - Yandex.Wiki, MediaWiki, L2U InKnowledge, Minervasoft, 1C-Bitrix24.
Microsoft Office - OnlyOffice, P7-Office, MyOffice, LibreOffice, WPS Office.
Microsoft Power BI - Polymatica, Visiology, PolyAnalyst, Contour BI, Foresight.
Microsoft Visio - Autograph.
Microsoft Teams — Yandex.Telebridge, Bizon365, Mail.ru video calls, TrueConf, Webinar Meetings, Pruffme, iMind, Videobridge, Jami, IVA MCU, Jazz, VideoUnion.
Microsoft Windows - Astra Linux, Alt Linux, Rosa, free free Linux distributions (Ubuntu and others), RED OS, Calculate Linux.
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