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Follow UsChairman: Bhaskar Pramanik www.microsoft.com
More Pain, Less Gain: In FY13, Microsoft came out with new versions of its flagship products-Windows 8, Office 365, Office 2013, etc,-the highest in its history. It was expected to witness a considerable traction for the new versions, mostly through upgrades, if not through new adoptions. However, the reality is something else. It crawled to grow at 13% compared to the previous year.
In the latter part, the company encountered slow adoption by enterprises, sluggish decision making in the government corridors, and lacklustre performance of the telecom sector. These issues might have contributed to the factors that forced Microsoft India to replace Sanket Akerkar with Karan Bajwa as its new managing director.
Choppy Waters: Microsoft's Windows 8 was one of the ambitious launches in the company's history. But the product did not take off as was imagined. Transitioning market effect seems to have affected its sales. Maybe this was the reason that the company made quick changes into the operating systems and launched upgraded version-Windows 8.1 this year. Its endeavors to make it successful on multiple platforms-PC, tablet, and smartphones-were in the starting phase, despite many OEMs such as Sony, HP, Dell, Acer, etc, launched devices enabled by Windows 8.
Growth Drivers: Microsoft Enterprise Partner Group (EPG) customer revenue grew more than 250%. Also Microsoft added over 15,000 Azure customers in India. On an average, it added 1,500 new Indian customers every month for Windows Azure, thereby catapulting Windows Azure revenues by 150% on YoY basis. Key customers who adopted Azure are Maruti, Infosys, and Essar.
Its Windows server data center revenues jumped 150% YoY in FY13 while Systems Center by 60%. Server business revenue were in double digits too. According to IDC, its Hyper-V market share at the end of Q3 FY13 was 35.6% and Vmware share was 55.4%. Its SQL server premium revenues also grew by 25% YoY.
Dynamics of Business: In FY13, the company had some notable customer wins. If the company is to believed, in the last four years it has added more than a customer a day for dynamics. It witnessed a healthy growth in retail (eg, Bombay Dyeing and SSPIL) for Dynamics AX business, while CRM online increased over 300% in FY13. Similarly, the Office 365 also brought cheers with customer acquisitions such as HT Media, Godrej, Croma, Bajaj Finserv. Also, Microsoft Lync quietly gained momentum with growth of about 50% in India.