Ukraine is known as the producer of useful software for businesses and individuals. But it also has something worthy to offer in cyber security.
ALLIT
Service company released its antivirus software Zillya! in 2009, becoming the
first antivirus software producer in Ukraine. Six years later, while
successfully selling its product outside Ukraine, it is finding less success at
home.
Only
13 percent of the company’s income and 180,000 users come from Ukraine. India, where Zillya! started selling in 2012,
accounts for 60 percent of the business. Since then it has sold around 1
million licenses in India. The rest of sales comes from Brazil, Nigeria, U.S.
and Great Britain.
In
Ukraine, the company offers a free antivirus package that runs in Ukrainian and
Russian, and an $8 version with advanced features. The corporate antivirus
license is $45 for minimum five computers.
However,
the company sells the software under its own brand Zillya! in Ukraine only,
while abroad it sells under various local brands, according to Oleh Sych, the
head of the antivirus development department.
“This
is called ‘white labeling.’ Clients buy our technology because of its good quality,
but they sell it under their own brand,” Sych says.
Ukrainian
software, he says, might not get customers’ attention unless some well-known
local developer offers it.
Zillya!
runs only on the Windows-powered computers. Sych says that the demand for
costly Apple Macs is too small in Ukraine and so is the demand for the iOS antivirus software. The foreign partners of ALLIT Service have also shown more
interest for the software that runs under Windows.
Russian
Kaspersky and Dr. Web are the most popular competitors in Ukraine, one of the
reasons why “Zillya!” isn’t so popular in its motherland.
When
defining which antivirus software is better, the main issue is to assess risks
and needs.
Sych
says that the basic level of protection can be guaranteed by any free antivirus
software. But when one needs more speedy and powerful tools, advanced software
works best.
The
main competitive advantage of Zillya! is its simplicity, its creators say.
“Usually
a user sees a pop-up window saying ‘You have a virus on your computer,’”
Sych says. “It has some directions on what to do to eliminate it, but what
the user really needs is for the virus to be deleted without him even noticing.
That’s the convenience we strive to offer.”
Developing
antivirus software proved to be a very challenging task for ALLIT Service,
which may be why no other Ukrainian IT companies have followed this path yet.
“Ukrainian
(IT) students are not taught basic skills for antivirus software
development,” Sych says. “To create such software one needs to have a
very extensive background in types of malicious software that have ever been
discovered.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored
by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe.
