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Microsoft is starting to disconnect Russian legal entities from its cloud services. The American corporation has been threatening to do this since March 2024.
The shutdown begins
Microsoft has begun disabling cloud subscriptions for corporate clients registered in Russia.
“Colleagues, we have received a notification from Microsoft Corporation about restricting access to some cloud subscriptions from September 2, 2024. We recommend that you save data from the Microsoft cloud (BackUp),” Softline representatives wrote in their Telegram channel.
The Softline expert explained in the chat that the only exception would be multinational companies (MNCs) that have headquarters in other countries and are managed from outside of Russia. "We don't know the mechanism for implementing the disconnection," the expert added and reported that at the time of the dialogue, the company had not received any information that anyone had already been disconnected.
CNews wrote about plans to disconnect all legal entities registered in Russia from Microsoft cloud services on September 2 on August 21, 2024. According to Softline, the restrictions will affect all licensing channels (Enterprise and CSP).
Sanctions for Russia Day
The ban on providing cloud services to Russians in the field of enterprise and production management software from September 12, 2024, was included in the sanctions package announced by the US Treasury Department in June 2024. The announcement coincided with the celebration of Russia Day.
The introduction of the package was timed to coincide with the G7 summit in Italy. US authorities also banned the provision of IT consulting and development services to Russian companies. The US Treasury Department emphasized that the goal is to prohibit the Russian military-industrial complex from accessing software and IT services.
Microsoft is proactive
Microsoft banned Russian businesses from using its cloud services back in mid-March 2024. The company cited European sanctions against Russia and gave companies just a few days to find new clouds and migrate their entire infrastructure to them. This was the 12th package of restrictions, adopted at the end of December 2023. It imposed restrictions on the import of services to Russia, including cloud ones, for business intelligence (BI), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), etc.
Later, Microsoft decided to give Russian companies a few extra days to find an alternative to its cloud services. In May, it turned out that the ban had never been initiated.
“Microsoft is investigating the issue of suspending access to cloud products in order to minimize unnecessary shutdowns,” said Andrey Blagorazumov, vice president of Softline Group.
There will be no western clouds
According to the analytical company Statista, in the fourth quarter of 2023, Amazon occupied 31% of the global cloud services market, and Microsoft - 24%, which in total gives more than half (55%) globally. Third place in this ranking is held by another American IT corporation - Google, whose share is 11%. According to Softline, the restrictions imposed on Russians may also affect its clouds. In March 2024, Amazon, synchronously with Microsoft, announced that it would close access to its cloud subscriptions to Russians.
"It is obvious that there are risks for business, including the loss of large amounts of data and the cessation of key business applications," Roman Mylitsyn, head of innovation research at PJSC Astra Group, told CNews at the time. "Sooner or later, arbitrary restrictions will begin for Russian companies. In this regard, a reasonable solution is to prepare a backup option in the form of working out migration to Russian solutions."
At the end of August, Astra Group informed CNews about the launch of the Astra Cloud cloud platform in Russia. According to the group's representatives, this platform allows, among other things, "to develop IT systems and optimize business processes of organizations." When asked by CNews whether Astra Cloud is a Russian alternative to the American clouds Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, the developers answered in the affirmative. The target audience of the product is the Enterprise segment and state-owned companies.
