'Our approach to business has always been long term, and we don't pull out resources or defocus them because of a short-term downturn or a slump' - Sanjay Mirchandani, MD, Microsoft Corp India Pvt Ltd

–Sanjay

Mirchandani,



Managing Director, Microsoft Corporation India Pvt Ltd.

While Sanjay Mirchandani has

been with Microsoft since 1995, he has only recently, in January 1998, taken up the role

of Managing Director for the Indian sub-continent. His continuing stint has already seen

announcement of major initiatives including the launch of the retail channel, SQL Server

7, Digital Nervous System and voluminous increase in certified programmers and authorized

training centers. Before coming to India, Mirchandani spent much of his time in the

Microsoft offices of the Middle East and Africa and at Arthur Andersen and Bell Atlantic.

He has a Master's of Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh. In an

interview with Dataquest, Mirchandani describes the current Microsoft outlook for the

country.

What are some of the recent

business initiatives taken by Microsoft in India?



In reality, Microsoft India reflects Microsoft internationally. One of the investments we
are making this year, which is being driven by our customer unit, is reaching out to the

three segments within the IT space. In our minds, we broadly categorize the IT

professional to be either a developer, someone who works in an IT department or a channel

partner who needs access to technical information. Another initiative that we launched in

July this year, is a community development program. There are three brand umbrellas that

we classify this into: Microsoft Developer Network, TechNet and Microsoft Direct Access.

We work through a combination of online, subscription and physical seminar sessions; a

three-fold continuous process and we do this countrywide.

Are there any particular market

segments on which Microsoft is focusing in India?



Though it is hard to define and separate, the small and medium businesses are very
important right now. Having said that, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done

in the enterprise space, with large corporations and the governments. Then we have a

process by which we touch small and medium businesses through seminars, through

partners-one-to-many relationship. And we use things like subscriptions, the web and

community activities to make sure we are engaging with this segment. So it's a business

model that we build across the world that complements our strengths with the strengths of

our partners, letting us focus on our core competency.

Considering the current slump in

corporate spending, do you plan to change your product and market focus?



Our approach to business has always been long-term, and we don't pull out resources or
defocus them because of a short-term downturn or a slump. We had already put people on the

ground to focus on nothing but internet technology before the internet or the ISP policy

was even conceived.

A lot of organizations are

upgrading, putting in servers and building infrastructure. Coming from a different

perspective, these are tough times for organizations, and this is where we feel our

technology can help them become more efficient. We are moving from purely delivering boxes

to offering Microsoft Consulting Services, as an integral part of doing business with the

enterprise. So, while there is a slowdown in the market, we are working with organizations

to see how they can become more efficient using our technologies, getting them to network

faster, do their processes faster, have a faster turnaround time and rotate their money

faster. The slowdown can probably make companies want to get more efficient, and

technology is one way of getting there. We really feel that the opportunity today is the

medium size organization and initiatives with the government.

How does the Enterprise Customer

Unit manage its accounts?



We use a combination of direct customer involvement on a one-to-one basis and work with
our partners to ensure, high levels of customer satisfaction and coverage. We have key,

one-to-many events that are focused on the enterprise space. For example, the Executive

Summit held in India and in Redmond every quarter, where we invite key decision-makers

within customers to attend to get a perspective of where we are going. We also have CIO

Round Tables, quarterly events in every city, where we bring in a speaker, usually from

Redmond, and invite our customers for a discussion on a hot topic.

What is your strategy for

Microsoft Consulting Services?



MCS has two roles, one is risk mitigation, and the second is skills transfer. For risk
mitigation, the MCS team members are agents that come to an organization with a partner or

work with the IT staff and show them the best way to deploy Microsoft technologies in a

risk-free manner. In skills transfer, our goal is to cover as many partners and customers

as need our skills. These are the two focus areas-one being to make sure the technology

can work correctly, and the second to transfer our skills to them.



This is unique because other consulting organizations don't perform the skills transfer
component. Why are we different? Like our certification program, we focus on our core

competency-software. Our MCS consultants are some of the most highly skilled professionals

within the Microsoft team, and we want them to go out and touch as many partners and

customers as they can and transfer skills. The influence an MCS consultant has on our

technology being deployed correctly, is the important criteria.

Where does Windows 98, Windows

NT, BackOffice Server and, now, Windows 2000 fit in the Indian end-user space?



Today, we have a very distinct strategy on the desktop operating systems. If you are a
corporate, and have a footprint that can support Windows NT Workstation, and are concerned

about total cost of ownership, manageability and security, the Windows NT Workstation-NT

Server combination is the way to go. That is the clear direction for a corporate customer

that wants all these benefits.

If you are a corporate customer who

does not have a footprint on your machines to run Windows NT Workstation or have DOS-based

dependencies, or don't need the security of Windows NT Workstation, Windows 98 is a

compelling upgrade. Windows 98 is a value package for multimedia, plug-and-play

technologies, and does appeal to the small business, homes and some corporate environments

that do not have the Windows NT Workstation footprint.

BackOffice Server is a key platform

to help Indian customers build infrastructure for taking them into the future. Components

like messaging, database, internet and systems management are key to doing that. The

BackOffice Sever platform is also a key component for our digital nervous system

architecture.

We don't have products for the

short term, so Windows 95 was launched in August 1995, and Windows 98 in June 1998, and

that is a three-year window where we built the product. Windows 2000-workstation and

server-is around the corner. And the road map will continue to be defined. But whatever it

is, we have always been backward compatible with our technologies. In fact, we still

support all the DOS code through Windows 98, because we understand that there are millions

of users out there.

So you really have to see which

pieces of technology make sense in the local environment. While the uptake has to go up,

you have to look at it from a local perspective.

Has the penetration of SQL

Server been slower than your expectations?



It has been a steady climb, and we cannot ignore existing market players. At the end, it
is the customer's choice, and it is our job to deliver the value with our products. The

whole point here is that we understand the space-there has been 25 years of Unix, NetWare

has been there, Oracle too has been there. We have a clear strategy of being able to

coexist and demonstrate the relevance of our products. We have over 1,000 certified

professionals in the last three months, who understand SQL Server 7.0.

We know we are the best performing

database on Windows NT, and this is our strength. Our tools dovetail with our products

well. So our approach-the BackOffice value proposition-customers using Exchange and

Windows NT, and the integration of SQL Server into this environment with intranet

solutions, hybrid workflow applications, makes it very effective. It is also in its own

right, a cost-effective, high performance database that runs on an Intel or Alpha

platform.

Can you describe the Microsoft

sales channel strategy?



As the traditional Microsoft approach, because we don't sell directly, we would never go
in and fill an order directly. We only work through partners. We work closely with all our

channel partners, developing and getting them skilled and updated on our technology, to

leverage corporate account opportunities. And this has been the traditional Microsoft way

of doing business. What really makes us unique is that our partners and the channel

dealers know categorically that there will never be an instance when Microsoft will go in

and do business directly. Simply put, we have no process for doing that.

What is Microsoft's role in

education and certification in India?



We started certification as an initiative in India in 1996. As more of our products were
proliferating down the stream, we soon realized we needed more people with the technical

expertise to support, maintain and develop our products. This initiative is also in an

investment mode in India.

We have authorized technical

education centers like NIIT, Aptech, STG, IIS Infotech, about 30 companies that partner

with us, and run over 60 centers. The curriculum offered is the Microsoft Official

Curriculum, designed by the product team in Redmond, and is uniform around the world. So

the Microsoft Certified Professional from India or anywhere else will be the same. As

there also needs to be a validation of the skills of the professionals, we have partnered

with Sylvan Prometric to administer the examinations, once again designed by Microsoft.

The success rate for these exams is 54%, and this ensures that the caliber of the

professionals is consistent worldwide.

Other streams are the

Microsoft-certified systems engineer, a product specialist who implements our platforms on

a network and the Microsoft-certified solution developer, who develops products and

solutions on Microsoft platforms and technologies. We also have an Authorized Academic

Training Partner Program working with colleges to offer Microsoft training and

certification, and the University Advanced Technology Labs program, sharing product code

and information with universities and educational institutes for their research.