OREANDA-NEWS The largest Russian IT companies are considering the purchase of domestic developers of operating systems, according to reports from the Kommersant newspaper. The report cites sources in the industry as saying that MTS, VK (formerly VKontakte), Rostelecom, and Rosatom are all interested in acquiring Russian OS developers. The interlocutors also mention Basalt SPO, Astra, Red Soft, and STC IT ROSA as possible buyers.

A source within the OS developer community has confirmed to the newspaper that negotiations are ongoing with several large IT organizations, but no specific details have been disclosed. One of the interlocutors explained that these large organizations "create their own ecosystem of IT products, which would be incomplete without the inclusion of an OS in their portfolio."VK, Rosatom, MTS, Basalt SPO, Astra and STC IT ROSA declined to comment on the matter. Rostelecom stated that its policy doesn't allow discussing transactions until they are completed. A representative of the company emphasized that it already has an infrastructure and system software developer in its portfolio (Rostelecom is the owner of Aurora mobile OS).

Dmitry Komissarov, a creator of Strigo Capital, is aware of the interests of large IT companies in acquiring OS developers. Among them, he mentioned VK and MTS. He also named Basalt SPO and Red Soft as obvious candidates for sale. "For a software developer, the acquisition by a major holding company would only be beneficial," the expert said. According to him, due to increasing revenue for developers, the price of "Basalt SPO" could amount to 5-8 billion rubles and that of "Red Soft" to 9-12 billion.