"Caught up" with Microsoft: three Russian office suites that are almost indistinguishable from the American one

There are three Russian office application suites in Russia that are 80–90% similar in functionality to Microsoft products. This was announced by Ilya Massukh, head of the Center of Competence for Import Substitution in the field of Information and Communication Technologies.

Image source generated by the DALL•E 3 neural network

We can say that almost all companies have approached the functionality in one way or another, and they - both "Alteroffice", "Myoffice", and "R7-Office" - are in a fairly good stage of development. There are no completely lagging or completely ahead. Yes, there is still work to be done to reach the functionality of Microsoft, but from the point of view of use for the needs of state-owned companies, large commercial companies, the products are absolutely mature.

Ilya Massukh, head of the Center of Competence for Import Substitution in the field of Information and Communication Technologies

Massukh noted that each of the Russian packages developed in its own way, and almost each of them contains elements of open source software, around which the rest of the product was built.

According to him, if we take Microsoft office products as 100%, then three Russian packages will correspond to approximately 80–90% of the functionality of the American company's products.

According to the expert, in order to catch up with Microsoft, it is necessary to make significant efforts by programmers and conduct a thorough analysis of the feasibility of such a step.

In accordance with the methodological guidelines of the Ministry of Digital Development, by January 1, 2025, state corporations and companies with state participation must completely switch to the use of domestic software products in several categories, including office suites.

As a reminder, in March 2024, Microsoft announced the blocking of access to its cloud services in Russia. This means that Russian companies will no longer be able to use Office 365, OneDrive and other digital products from Microsoft.

However, after that, Microsoft unlocked access to Windows and Office updates. Now users can download new versions of software without having to use a VPN.