Cellular operators of Russia earn on the clouds

Over time, the revenue of Russian telecom operators associated with the clouds is gradually increasing. For example, many companies began to make profits after actively investing in cloud services. For example, MTS revenue for 2018 has tripled, to about 1 billion rubles. Investments of the company in this area reach 12.4 billion rubles, Kommersant writes .

Other companies are doing well too. Rostelecom predicts revenue growth by one and a half times, Vimpelcom and even ten times. In this regard, many telecom operators plan to actively develop, expanding their cloud services. Experts believe that cloud services in the future will be able to bring operators up to 10-20% of revenue.

As for investments, in the case of MTS it is the purchase of the data center Avantazh for 8.9 billion rubles, as well as the cloud provider IT Grad 1 Cloud for 2.5 billion rubles. Plus, the funds aimed at developing the cloud provider CloudMTS are taken into account. The latter for 2018 increased its revenue from cloud services more than three times. As a result, the revenue of MTS in this area in 2018 is 1 billion rubles.

VimpelCom does not lag behind, developing its own cloud platform. In 2019, the company predicts a 10-fold increase in revenue from cloud services, as reported by its representative. The company launched BeeCloud in April 2018, entering a summer fee for it. Earlier, the operator said that in August, revenues from cloud services reached 800 thousand rubles.

The cloud business of Rostelecom for the first nine months of 2018 showed an increase of 2.5 times. In 2019, the operator is going to increase the share of cloud services in revenue by about one and a half times. Earlier, Rostelecom announced that it was considering the purchase of the second largest player in the Russian market of DataLine data processing centers, which is estimated at $ 500-600 million, excluding debt. "The company's main investments are related to the development of a disaster-resistant geo-distributed data center network," the operator said.

Last October, MegaFon, together with Mail.ru, launched the Business Cloud corporate business solution. The operator does not disclose the volume of investments in the cloud sphere, but we must think that they are no less than those of other operators. Tele2 develops its own cloud processes (for internal use) with Oracle.

IDC Analytical Agency predicts that in 2018 the volume of the Russian cloud services market should have grown by 20.7%, in terms of money it is $ 800 million. Russian telecom operators do not play a significant role in this market yet, since the cloud business has only begun to develop. This was stated by IDC cloud services research manager Dmitry Gavrilov. Experts believe that in the future, cloud services may bring telecom operators 10-20% of revenue. True. In order to successfully develop this business, we need a very strong technical expertise.

No less active growth shows the market data centers. True, a monopolist may soon appear here. It's about Rostelecom, a state-owned company that plans to acquire DataLine . In the case of the merger of both companies, Rostelecom’s share in the data center market will be 25-30%, and will gradually increase.

Experts believe that the active growth of cloud services and the data center market is due, first of all, to the digital transformation planned by the state. In the next few years, Russia plans to implement a number of large-scale initiatives in this area. One of the most ambitious is the implementation of a program for the development of the digital economy.

No less significant factor is the "law of spring." Implementing its position, large telecom operators can even earn, and not lose money, as previously thought. Federal telecom operators will provide regional data storage services.

According to experts, the monthly income of Rostelecom and other telecom operators from leasing their data centers to other operators can reach hundreds of millions of rubles. And this service will be in demand, since small companies that do not have their own fleet of servers will have to turn to larger partners. All telephone conversations, text messages, images, sounds and even video recordings will have to be stored.