In line with the growing “buy domestic” trend that has swept Russia over the past two years, developers have created a homegrown suite of office applications designed as an alternative to popular western products such as Microsoft Office.
The new suite of programs, called ‘MoyOffice’ (‘MyOffice’) was developed by the company New Cloud Technologies, a firm which is focused, according to its website, on the creation of “complex cloud solutions for online mass storage and document processing”, LifeNews reports
The suite’s developers explained that their suite, developed from scratch beginning in 2013, is designed as a leaner, less bulky alternative to programs like Microsoft Office, with Russian users said to exploit, on average, no more than 20% of the latter’s built-in functionality, Sputnik writes.
With this in mind, developers decided to drop the bloat and focus on key features, processing speed and accessibility. MyOffice features programs, including Text, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Mail, Calendar and Contacts, along with a ‘Documents’ repository.
Offered for use to government, corporate and individual clients, prices for the new office suite are expected to range from 5,000-7,000 rubles ($75-$105) for a one year subscription.
The new program arrives ahead of a series of laws recently passed by the Russian government, which step into effect on January 1, 2016, mandating that state agencies and public institutions purchase foreign programs only if no domestic equivalent is available.
With this in mind, New Cloud Technologies will be offering its suite on a trial basis to about 70,000 government workers, with plans to begin introducing the program to Russian public schools in February.
Furthermore, the company does not plan to limit itself to Russian-speaking markets, with ambitious plans to capture one-fifth of the market in Brazil and Latin America, and a 10% share of the European market over the next five years.
