Focus is on cloud tech, gaining leadership in India: Microsoft

Microsoft India is focusing on re-inventing its business, personal computing and gaining leadership in the intelligent cloud space. The company is seeing above industry growth rate, said the company’s India president Anant Maheshwari. Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Maheshwari said that the company provides end-to-end solution that is flexible, scalable and hyper secure. “You will see us do a lot more on the cloud in India because we are also seeing that traction in the different parts of the ecosystem,” he said. Microsoft is closely working with the government on cyber security management. There are vast opportunities to work on cloud in India, Maheshwari added. Below are the excerpts of Anant Maheshwari's interview to Shereen Bhan on CNBC-TV18.Q: What is the growth roadmap for the company?A: Overall for Microsoft India, without specifically going into any of those numbers, I think we are definitely seeing growing above industry rates in India.Q: Is that the NASSCOM industry rate?A: I would not call out on one aspect there because we have the ability to play in multiple segments. We are not focused in just one segment which some of our peers maybe. So the three bold ambitions of the company globally are to reinvent business and the productivity processes that companies may have. It is to completely think about more personal computing and not just computers or other form factors that people maybe computing today but more personal computing broadly and third is being the leader of the intelligent cloud. So if you look at those three bold ambitions, we are playing in very different spaces and the blend of those is what we see playing out for many of our customers and partners and that is where the momentum is coming for Microsoft because we do provide an end-to-end solution that is flexible, that is scalable and it is hyper secure. Q: Speaking of one of the levers that you hope to leverage on and that is the small and medium-size business (SMB) space in India which everybody is going after. Post the November 8 notification and this move towards cashless India and so forth, what has been the impact that you have seen on the ground?A: In the beginning, which is very short-term right now, we are only two months from that point in time; there was a lot of reaction in the market because there was a certain way of doing business that had to change. Over the last few weeks we have seen the ability both in our partner ecosystem and the customer ecosystem to think even more bold and different in terms of how they would do things going forward. As I was saying earlier there could be four used cases of starting that journey. As they go forward in this journey in digital transformation, very likely they are likely to think about three big areas to scale. One is just the hyper scale of computing. Second is security, very-very important in this world because the levels of security and what can go wrong is we are recognising today across the world and third is flexibility.Today, Microsoft is uniquely positioned in India not just globally. In India, we have our own data centres, our own cyber security engagement centre. One of seven globally that is in India, working closely with the Indian government and large enterprises and also the only one to be able to offer either a public cloud or a private cloud or a flexible cloud, which is the hybrid cloud also thinking in terms of the kind of solutions that people may offer in different parts of their own IT architecture. So we are in a unique place of thinking it end-to-end with lots of choices. Q: Any more India based investments. We are seeing this trend for a lot of people investing money in start-ups in India. You have been nurturing that ecosystem through Microsoft in the accelerator programme and so on but anything interesting that we could expect in the year ahead?A: You mentioned the accelerator; I would like to reiterate that point first, it has been a tremendously successful initiative for us in India. Going forward in terms of the other areas that we may potentially look at, we are continuously looking in terms of what we can do differently in different spaces that we operate in and it is not just thinking about equity as a model. I think it is about many different forms of investment. Our data centres were a classical example. The cyber security engagement centre is a big example of what we have done in terms of investments in the country because the country needs it and we will continue to do that as we go along, there are a lot of initiatives in play already.Q: What can we expect in terms of investments in terms of hiring more in India, in terms of new initiatives in 2017?A: Those are acceleration of either investments or hiring - that I would not say is game changing in the way you might be asking me the question. However, when it comes to the specific growth initiatives that we are driving, you will see us do a lot more on the cloud in India because we are also seeing that traction in the different parts of the ecosystem. Initially, over the last year or so there were a lot of pilots, people were experimenting it. I will give you an example of a CEO that I just met a few months back and he was saying 15 months back sitting with his leadership team he was making three-five year business plan of what they might do.Twelve months down the line, they have already done a lot of the stuff that they planned three-five years out. I think that is the pace that is changing across the different parts of the ecosystem and we are happy to support that change. So I would say 2017 is still a long period. In this industry, it is three-six months that one should think about.Q: You have stopped drawing up five year plans?A: My previous genre and the company that I was in, you have to think long-term given the industries that we are operating in. Here the long-term is important but how you continue to perform in the short to medium-term, completely changes the landscape. So innovation is much faster in this landscape.Watch video for entire discussion....