Russian Post - the national postal service headquartered in Moscow - is planning to spend almost six billion rubles (approximately $108 million) over the next three years to outsource its data center and call center operations.

According to Russian daily Vedomosti, this includes issuing a massive tender for web hosting and colocation, which will end on 27 April.

Strategic enterprise

Russian Post is responsible for more than 42,000 local branches across the country. In 2013, following reports of delays and inefficiencies, Russian government signed a resolution which reformed the organization as a ‘strategic enterprise’, setting out to double its revenues and pave the way towards IPO in 2018.

But in order to modernize its operations, Russian Post needs more data center capacity. It will not be building its own - instead, it has announced a competition to find a third-party supplier which will provide hosting and colocation until 2018.

A spokesman told Vedomosti that the organization maintains a fairly small IT estate, so it doesn’t make financial sense to make an upfront payment for a purpose-built facility.

Russian Post will initially need 10 racks and half-Petabyte of storage capacity, gradually increasing to 40 racks and 2PB. It will use the servers to run its logistics operations and support additional IT projects – such as the national domestic property register.

It is hoped new infrastructure will help Russian Post – known for its unreliable nature - improve quality of service, optimize delivery routes and enable customers to better track packages in transit.

Research firm IDC estimates that the Russian data center market will grow at a rate of 14.3 percent annually between 2014 and 2018, with the public sector the third largest customer, following finance and telecommunication industries.