“Microsoft Moved into a very consistent mechanism across the world”
In a conversation with PC Quest Anant Maheshwari, President of Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt. Ltd. shares the structure and functioning of Microsoft’s GTM strategy
What are the different LoBs under which Microsoft India currently functions? There are two structures by which we at Microsoft India organize our offerings. One is in terms of solution where there are four focus areas viz. modern workplace, business applications, infrastructure and DATA & AI. Modern workplace includes Windows, Office 365, the enterprise mobility suite and the security aspects. The business apps would have the Dynamics 365 and it also partners with LinkedIn. Then in the infrastructure space there is the Azure Cloud.The second structure is in terms of the enterprise.
What are the go to market strategies for Microsoft? We broadly have four ways to go to market: one is our enterprise commercial business where we are looking at all the commercial key accounts that we work with . There are more than 500 accounts that we work with as the named accounts. Than we have the enterprise public sector business and healthcare where we work with all the healthcare providers and government. We also have the enterprise services business where we are at both the consulting side and the premier support for the customers who sign up on that. Also finally we have the small medium and corporate business where we work largely through our channels and partners to service the large medium and small scales customers. And also we work with our OEMs like DELL, HP. We also do a lot of the gaming work on the consumer side.
What will be the roadmap for 2018 specifically for the government projects and also if you can highlights some of the key project? The key projects cover both the central government. The specific areas where we are engaged in are the state governments, the education sector and the healthcare sector. Those would be the broad areas how we go to market in that team and when it comes to what we are doing. I think it’s very similar to the government and smart cities or even some of the work they doing on their own infrastructure all of that we are engaged in with the government. We would do definitely work like what we did with ‘Swayam’ in terms of go to market we work with them and combination of Microsoft and its partners come together to create that new solution in the digital India.
What would be the Azure Roadmap for SMBs? Nothing which is different from what we have done so far continuously we will keep adding the Azure data centre and to me that is the real key applications also as AI for Microsoft is not a separate product whether it is our office 365 suite or it is Azure data services whether you bring in these services to manage data and therefore AI is embed in everything that we do. A lot of our focus will remain in creating those capabilities and services as we go to market and it will not be one thing that will come. There will be multiple things that will be coming up. And the services we have already kept so that will remain the key focus area for us.
What will be the key focus areas in terms of partner ecosystems? I think it’s one of the most dramatic strategies for Microsoft is when we created the one commercial partner organization globally where we moved into a very consistent mechanism across the world. So globally if you look at our partner terms now they have 3 broad components in the partner terms. their is a build with side in the partners there is a sell with side in the partners and then this is a whole go to market office motion and because we choose that many partners and that many customers. We also have 4 district types of partners as we see it now. So there is ISV’S the software vendors who have the highest amount of the Intellectual property in terms of what they are doing; than there are SIs and advisories who do a lot of go to market but create their solution based on the many of tool kits that we provides or they may even partner with ISV’S to take those solution to customers. Then there are the managed service providers (MSPs) who work with the whole Azure stack whereby they can host the private clouds in their data centers. Finally, there are the traditional channel partners.