The war between Russia and Ukraine is now in its third week. Ukraine has been getting all sorts of aid (direct and indirect) from different countries within and outside Europe. Russia has been hit with severe bans by different countries and companies are now pulling out of the Russian market. After the pull-out of Western cloud providers from Russia, the country is now facing a serious IT storage crisis. According to reports, Russia has just two months before it runs out of data storage.
However, the government of Russia is now exploring its options to resolve this issue. The government has the option of seizing all available data storage of companies that pulled out of the country. It could also lease all available Russian data storage.
According to Kommersant, Russia has about two months before its available storage space runs out. After Western cloud services cut their ties with Russia, domestic businesses had to turn to Russian cloud storage. Russian mobile carrier MegaFon storage capacity increased fivefold. Furthermore, MTS increased tenfold while VK had to seek 20% more storage resources.
Gizchina News of the week
Presently, there are not enough data centers to accommodate the operators in Russia. This is why the government is urgently working on a practical solution to the issue. Furthermore, due to ongoing “smart city” projects, there is also a need for more storage capacity. These projects involve extensive video surveillance and facial recognition systems.
Possible solutions
1. Russian telecom operators are no longer required to increase their storage capacity allocation by 15% yearly. This extra requirement used to be for anti-terrorist surveillance purposes. The Yarovaya Law governing this yearly increase was amended just last week.
2. ISPs will have to abandon media streaming services. Also, other online “unimportant” outlets that use up storage space will have to stop their activities.
3. Russian government may just have to buy out all available storage from processing centers. This will mean that the government will strictly control data storage and there will be no room for entertainers.
4. The Russian government will probably take over the storage left by foreign companies that exited Russia.
5. Russia may have to turn to China. However, China is yet to confirm whether or not they will be helping Russia. Thus, this option is still hanging in the balance. Nevertheless, Chinese companies like Huawei which is already facing numerous bans from the U.S. may have to cease the opportunity and fill the void left by exiting western competitors.