Cloud services are fast becoming one of the most attractive growth opportunities for the global telecoms industry, with Gartner projecting exponential expansion in the medium term worldwide. That’s why we continue to actively invest and make smart bets in cloud services in Russia, with an eye on capturing the first-mover advantage and capitalizing on this emerging engine of growth.

The first promising signs of potential future returns are already becoming apparent. In Q1 2019, revenue generated by #CloudMTS services grew fourfold year-over-year, with data storage and processing volumes up an exceptional 7.5 times. Over 600 corporate clients were utilizing MTS cloud-based solutions during the quarter, and over 60% of #CloudMTS users were also consuming complementary MTS mobile and data services.

Currently, our business clients in the retail sphere comprise the largest share of #CloudMTS users, representing 25% of the overall customer base. Businesses in the finance sector are the second-highest at 22%, followed by industrial companies at 20%. 

For #CloudMTS Director Oleg Motovilov, developing the cloud services business is a key pillar of MTS’s larger strategy to become a next-generation digital services provider. “We have recently significantly strengthened our position on the cloud services market, both via the acquisition of IT-Grad, one of Russia’s leading cloud businesses, as well as by launching new services and continuing to develop our platforms,” he said. “For example, we recently became the first company in Russia to offer public cloud antivirus protection for enterprise clients. And we are now actively working on developing containerized services, which will provide our customers the opportunity to leverage cutting-edge innovations, such as microservice architectures.”

As is natural with new digital technologies, more than half of all requests we received in Q1 to migrate to cloud-based services originated in IT departments, who are early adopters and often the first to recognize the benefits cloud services can provide in improving the reliability, integrity, and agility of information infrastructure.

MTS’s cloud-based services are delivered via the proprietary #CloudMTS platform, which incorporates industry-leading technologies, including VMWare solutions and Microsoft’s Azure Stack. We provide a broad array of cloud-based solutions for Russian enterprise clients—including online stores, web portals, backend databases, and testing environments.