Oxygen - one of the fastest growing players of cloud platforms - enters the IT market of Kazakhstan

Pavel Suchkov, Oxygen's Marketing Director, told about the company's creation from the very beginnings

We started as a data center with a few racks back in 2011. Then as now there was a lack of professional space for data storage and processing. And this is natural - the development of technology and growth of power consumption have always been and, I'm sure, will continue to keep up with each other. So we did our own research and rode around the world's top sites from Luxembourg to Melbourne, adopted best practices and launched the first machine room for 20 racks. Despite the fact that we were just taking our first steps, we immediately set the bar high. We brought both the territory and the data center building into compliance with TIA-942 standards, thought about redundancy of all engineering systems and of course, invested in the education and professionalism of the team. The team is our backbone. 99% of the people who started the company in 2011 are still with us. So we actively developed, grew, and, most importantly, listened to our customers. And clients began to signal the following: "it's not enough for us to just have space for our servers anymore. We want to use turnkey services, not invest in them." It became clear that we had grown out of the "iron fridge" and it was time to become a full-fledged IT company. And in 2016, we were one of the first in the world to launch our own cloud, based on VMware version 6.5. And in January 2022, we were the first in EMEA, that is, from Reykjavik to Johannesburg, to launch Oracle DBaaS from the public cloud. Rewinding the tape forward, I will say that by the turn of 2022, our data center was in the top 10 in Russia, and the cloud platform was the second fastest growing platform. And we are not stopping! We have international ambitions, and in the next few weeks we will be announcing our entry into the Kazakhstan market.

Why is entering the Kazakh market so important for Oxygen?

There are many reasons. First of all, Kazakhstan is one of the fastest growing markets in Central Asia. The country is experiencing stable economic growth, which in itself leads to an increased demand for quality IT services, and many Russian companies have also relocated there en masse. In order for these companies to function at their usual pace, they need a familiar IT landscape. In addition, the government of Kazakhstan supports, if not initiates, the digitalization of public services. And this includes administration, health care and education. In general, Kazakhstan is actively investing in the development of its IT infrastructure. This favors the development of technology in all kinds of companies, from fintech and e-com to manufacturing, mining, and heavy industry. Kazakhstan is also very well located between China and Russia. You have to take advantage of this if you want to establish a presence in the region.

And of course, the country has a lot of qualified specialists, and often entire teams in the IT field, which allows you to consider the most ambitious projects feasible. Therefore, we consider Kazakh market as one of the most promising for us and for the IT industry as a whole.

Who is your client?

Any companies that both use IT services for their own tasks and provide IT services to other companies. Our portfolio mostly consists of the cases of large companies. For example, 7 of the 13 backbone banks in Russia and the biggest retailers and e-commerce companies are our clients. But there are also exotic cases - for example, a famous animation studio uses our cluster with GPU as a farm for rendering cartoons. Rendering water textures, skin and character hair requires enormous power, which we provide. But we do not work only with end customers. One of the most popular formats of partnership with us is White Label. A partner company can enrich their product portfolio with our cloud solutions and offer them under their own brand. It turns out that they "front" the client and we do all the product, marketing and technical support.

What products do you offer your customers?

Of course, these are traditional cloud services, such as IaaS/PaaS/SaaS, infobase, turnkey software development, and database management. But! Remember when I told you that we listen to our customers all the time? Well, the feedback allows us to conclude that cloud integration is the natural evolutionary path for IT companies. We have accumulated enough expertise to offer the market not just individual products, but an entire ecosystem of competencies. And if you approach your question from this perspective, then here is what we can really offer:

1. Consulting. We help businesses determine which cloud solutions are best suited to their needs and goals, while making sure it's affordable.

2. Migration of data and applications to the cloud. We're involved in all phases: first we plan, then we migrate, and then we optimize to make it work well and securely. Our IT specialists and developers are responsible for "high quality", and the large team of IS specialists - for "safe".

3. System Integration. We provide integration of various cloud and online services, so they can interact with each other. At the same time, we prioritize the continuity of customer processes.

4. Management and support. We administer and support the cloud infrastructure. This includes performance monitoring, security, backup and recovery management, user support, etc.

5. Staff training. We create competence centers within our customers, so they can solve problems on their own, without involving us on many issues

6. And, of course, Digital Transformation, which often involves significant changes in the organization. We offer the development of new processes and support in managing them.

And everything we offer is done with the absolute priority of data security, cloud infrastructure compliance with security standards and regulatory requirements.

http://oxygen.cloud