Despite rising pressure to do so, content delivery network (CDN) technology providers Cloudflare and Akamai have refrained from totally withdrawing from Russia.
Russia requires more, not less Internet access, stated Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince.
They do have expressed their disapproval to President Vladimir Putin entering Ukraine with the Russian army. Withdrawing their services from Russia would result in an unwanted discontinuation of Internet information distribution in Russia. Whereas Cogent pulls the plug on clients in Russia, Cloudflare and Akamai deliberately don't.
Russia requires more, not less Internet access, stated Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince in his blog post here. He added that pulling out of Russia would do very little to hurt the Russian regime. Instead, it would limit access to foreign news sites while increasing the vulnerability of Russian demonstrators.
Mr. Prince added he applauds the spirit of many Ukrainians making demands for firms to discontinue services in Russia across the ICT industry. However, completely shutting down Cloudflare’s services in Russia would be a mistake according to the CEO, given that what Cloudflare is basically delivering is a more open, private, and secure Internet.
SAP, Oracle, Microsoft
There are several other major software vendors who seem to continue their support of software applications at Russian organizations such as Sberbank and the Russian retailer Magnit. Although several of these IT solutions vendors have stated that they do not accept new orders, they are not that clear about continuing support for existing applications. Among them are SAP, Oracle, Teradata, and Microsoft.Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation has asked SAP to stop supporting and selling software to Russian organizations. “This is not enough!”, he stated on Twitter. “The army of the bloody invaders continues to kill our civilian population. We ask you to stop supporting SAP products as long as Russian tanks and missiles attack Ukraine,” he added.
