Why Is Russia Facing a Cloud Storage Crisis and What Can Be Done?

Why Is Storage Space Critical?

According to Russian media Kommersant, Russia is confronting a severe shortage of cloud storage capacity, with the remaining space sufficient for only two months of operation, threatening the continuity of national information systems.

Authorities are preparing for potential computing power shortages that could disrupt essential services.

Following the exit of major foreign cloud providers such as Google, Oracle, Apple, VMware, and Microsoft, many Russian enterprises have shifted to domestic alternatives, sharply increasing demand for server capacity:

Mixed IT infrastructure provider Linxdatacenter reports a continuous rise in both existing and new customer requests to migrate data and IT systems from foreign cloud services to local solutions.

O2xygen CEO Pavel Kulakov notes a two‑fold increase in applications over the past week.

VK (formerly Mail.ru) observes a 20% rise in cloud storage users and anticipates growing demand for open‑source solutions.

MTS reports a ten‑fold increase in requests to move to its cloud platform between February 28 and March 4.

MegaFon indicates a five‑fold growth in cloud service demand.

The "smart city" projects, which involve extensive video surveillance and facial‑recognition systems, are driving exponential growth in storage needs for public institutions.

Logistical disruptions have also hampered the delivery of imported foreign equipment, with some servers withheld due to sanctions.

What Are the Solutions?

International consulting firm iKS‑Consulting estimates that Russia's cloud market was about 130 billion rubles in 2021, with IaaS accounting for 466 billion rubles. The largest domestic players are Rostelecom Data Center (19%), SberCloud (14.7%), MTS (9.9%), Selectel (9.2%) and CROC (7.3%); foreign cloud services hold roughly 7.1%.

By early 2022, approximately 55,800 rack units were in commercial data centers, with government hosting services representing 7.1% of the market and 14.2% of IaaS demand.

If storage shortages are not swiftly addressed, Russia's overall infrastructure could suffer significant setbacks in the era of full cloud adoption.

On March 9, the Russian Digital Transformation Ministry convened an emergency meeting with representatives from Sberbank, MTS, Oxygen, Rostelecom, Atom‑Data, CROC and Yandex to discuss solutions for the data storage system (DSS) and server shortage.

Require ISPs to discontinue bandwidth‑intensive streaming and other online entertainment services.

Purchase all available storage from domestic data centers, though operators themselves face soaring hardware costs and limited financing.

Consider seizing IT servers and storage left by companies exiting Russia and integrating them into public infrastructure.

Other potential measures include leveraging Chinese cloud service providers, though implementation is complicated by international competition.

Reference: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5258236