As Microsoft moves from being a software licensee to a devices and services company, the Redmond headquartered software giant is taking along the partners for gaining the confidence of enterprises, its primary consumers. Meetul Patel, general manager, small and mid-market solutions & partners (Microsoft India) talks to Anand J on the challenges and opportunities as the company strives hard to take the SMBs to cloud and its Office suite of products. Excerpts:
How is your partner ecosystem evolving as Microsoft changes from software to a devices and services firm?
We are a partner-centric organisation. We go to market with partners. There are large partners who focus on deals with enterprises that are in technical domain. We have value added re-sellers who go out and sell to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). And we don?t manage the whole ecosystem, which also includes distributors, service providers, alliance partners and so on and have a specific role in our market reach. There are almost 10,000 partners in our ecosystem in India.
We have a big opportunity here in terms of market for IT. All the four global mega trends namely mobile, cloud, big data and social, are applicable to India as well and which has potential for accelerating IT adoption. Social is relevant to India because it is young and receptive to the idea of doing collaborative work. More and more information is available for businesses to react and make decisions now making big data an important tool.
But does it make sense for the SMEs to invest in IT network and management? Cloud has almost eliminated all of the complexities. Mobility devices let you control your business in a different geography. And we have products to connect across these various dimensions to help businesses. And our uniqueness is in our partner ecosystem which has been selling our products for a long time to these businesses.
But is it not a problem that you are far too dependent on partners at a time when BYOD is changing the work culture and a consumer connect becomes important?
I will like to separate BYOD from the services we offer for SMEs. It is about the services that run on these devices. BYOD is a big challenge for enterprises as they need to ensure security. What happens when a device that is both personal and official is stolen? You use the device at both secure and insecure environment. We make it very easy to use it at both levels. Yammer will help in situations where you need to have a social network at work and this makes Sharepoint an easy to use tool with your colleagues and business partners across geographies. There is a billion out there in India who have not even started.
Don?t you think your competitors also have similar products. For instance, Google also has its cloud services, Mail, Docs, Spreadsheet and so on. Unlike in US, where people are familiar with Microsoft through PCs, here you are doing it from scratch.
It is about how do you make sure that your security and control are in place. The products you mentioned are different. The Excel for enterprise has many tools and is a product used by a billion people. When the adoption grows in India, the market grows and all of us benefit. The existing infrastructure is a hindrance as you have to move all the data to a public cloud from your server. And India has the chance to leapfrog as they don?t have the legacy. They can get world-class enterprise level cloud that Fortune 500 companies use on the other side of the globe at the snap of a finger and at a fraction of a cost.
Is the customer acquisition cost too high in India?
The partner ecosystem may have a higher cost of sale and it takes time in India. We invest a lot in reducing the cost of sales. That is a challenge and we provide them whole lot of market support in improving their capabilities. We go with them during the marketing field trips, we do events and joint seminars to bring people so that we can reduce the door to door marketing.
Is Azure cloud service along with Office 365, your focus when you approach SMBs in India? How is the growth rate?
Absolutely. It is an offer that has tremendous value for SMBs and we have 500 partners just for cloud. It is a tool that helps them to create a tool that help them to analyse, to communicate, to share for all the SMBs on the cloud without having to create all of that technical and management platforms that would have been normally necessary and can benefit more than anyone else. They can use the apps by just plugging in to internet/cloud that may make Powerpoint more lively for presentations. The cloud will instantaneously bring them on par with any 21st century company in any part of the world. It is the fastest growing sector for us. Globally, Office 365 was the fastest product in the history of Microsoft to hit $1 billion.
How are partners seeing Microsoft?s shift to a devices and services company?
The cloud story evolved couple of years ago. What the partners want to know is how we make the market understand the shift. Secondly, how do you develop your own capabilities in these areas. Thirdly, how does it impact your business model.
Is speed of internet connection a problem for you to penetrate tier 2 and tier 3 cities here?
If the firm is in a locality where broadband connectivity is a challenge there might be some issues. Like the departmental offices with the central one; but broadband is not a necessary condition for that level of usage. What they will not be able to use is HD videos but even voice can be handled at today?s bandwidth.
