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dIGITal ENTErPrISE | TALkING POINT

how do you or Microsoft understands digital trans- than the revenues of many pure play security companies.
formation. Today it seems to have become confusing, For India, we have opened a cyber security engagement
meaning different things to different people? center for our customers, which keeps them updated on
Digital transformation can be classified into four things. what is happening in India and globally. This is a approach
With digital, you engage with your customers much better. where all the security layers are built within the cloud,
You empower your employees to do a lot more. and the center provides customer a continuous update
You can optimize and improve your operations, and do on detecting and handling cyber security threats and
things differently, and create efficiencies and effectiveness attacks.
in your operations. Or you transform your business mod-
el, and offer new services or products to your customers how has been the market response in India so far?
in a very very different way. Teese are the four things that Microsoft cloud is the largest cloud globally, according
digital transformation can essentially do. For the verticals to independent studies, and in India also we are seeing
we are now focusing on, digital transformation will have phenomenal response. For instance, 70 out of the 100
some play or the other. For instance in automotive and BSE 100 companies are on Microsoft cloud. India’s top
manufacturing the IoT which will lead to things like the 20 banks are on Microsoft cloud. In the six verticals
connected cars or process efficiencies respectively be- that we have been focusing, I can confidently claim that
comes the driver; in startups its the need for growth that the marquee customers are moving to Microsoft cloud.
will drive digital transformation, and so on. They all see the advantage and the power of end to end
So with Microsoft or its ISV, a customer can take a long benefits.
term bet, and take up digital transformation for one of the
four reasons I talked about. And later on other three things Can you shed some light on the SMB opportunity and
could be the reason for getting into digital transformation. how is Microsoft addressing that
But with the Microsofts’ base platform you can do lots of For the SMBs our plan is focused around offering specific
thing with a long term plan. solutions for them through the cloud so that they are
saved from handling technology, get everything at one
What is special about Microsoft’s cloud and cloud place, have a wider choice and are not locked in, need
offerings ? Cloud is being offered by everyone today not invest in technology and can pay per use. Thankfully,
Our cloud has got four very strong and unique features, our offerings have come in at a time when access to
which differentiates it from what’s available in the market affordable broadband is a reality, and the GST policies, and
today. For instance Azure cloud is hybrid ready, it is digital payment options are only catalysing SMB users for
productive, it is intelligent, and it is secure. With hybrid, technology adoption. We recently undertook a campaign
every CIO can decide what mix of on-premise and on- where a bus loaded with our technology solutions alonwith
cloud should he go for, keeping in mind his nature of experts visited SMB locations and clusters across the
business and time of requirement. With hybrid we also country to give them a touch and feel experience. The
offer you a more open environment, for instance in terms response was overwhelming from potential customers as
of choosing what solutions you want to use. We can offer well as our partners who will cater to SMB customers.
the ‘best of breed’ option to our customers. Secondly, I believe that SMB adoption of technology will be much
since there needs to be done development and coding faster. For us, SMB is bigger than some of the six verticals
to get going on the cloud, the Microsoft cloud platforms that we talked about earlier.
have the best tools for developers to be very productive
and very quickly. That is very very important for the cloud how do you see Microsoft’s future in India, specially
users. The third strength is intelligence that comes in under the leadership of Satya Nadella?
our cloud platform because there is so much of artificial We are looking at India as one of the key drivers of
intelligence, analytics, machine learning that has gone into Microsoft’s growth globally. And there are now conditions
building it. The built-in intelligence becomes added power and opportunities that are being created for India to play a
for customers, and they do not have to do it separately. big role in our company’s growth. I think Satya says it best
It saves times and provides additional capabilities. And in his book ‘Hit Refresh’ that Microsoft has moved from a
finally the security aspect, which is perhaps the biggest ‘know it all’ to a ‘learn it all’ company. To me the cultural
concern of users, and rightly so. We spend more than transformation of Microsoft is the bedrock of everything
$1 Bn in R&D and engineering for making our products we are apparently doing well, and will continue to do well
and services secure, and this investment is way too large as we go forward.

36 | January, 2018 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication |