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Adoption of cloud technologies not only empowers small and medium businesses (SMBs) but also help them save cost on hardware, increase efficiencies and deliver agile products and services to their customers. Coimbatore incidentally is home to one of the largest markets for SMBs in India, observed Manish Sharma, Lead – SMB Business, Microsoft India.
Comparing cloud services taken up by SMBs to “ordering a pizza online” or “booking a cab”, Sharma said, “in either of these, the customer is more concerned about the outcome and not the process. He doesn’t care what goes behind the scene.”
“Adoption of cloud technologies with the right set of solutions will help SMBs innovate and grow,” he added, introducing two city-based businesses – Bioline Laboratory and MontBleu Technologies – and highlighting how these two start-ups had leveraged Microsoft Azure, Office 365, CRM Online and Disaster Recovery Services to transform their business.
The Technical Manager of Bioline Laboratory Dinesh Kumar recalled how the Coimbatore-head-quartered clinical lab grappled with severe connectivity issues initially as the lab application was custom built to fit into an on-premises solution.
“Poor connectivity impacted the uploading and downloading of diagnoses reports. The Chennai floods in 2015 further impacted our business; there were no transactions for nearly a week and our goodwill was at stake.
“Quadra Systems, a Microsoft partner suggested the shift to Microsoft Azure. We did and in no time managed seamless access to patients’ data and branches as well. We also recorded an immediate saving of ₹40 lakh, which we would have otherwise invested in acquiring software and hardware for on-premise servers, disaster recovery, leased line connectivity etc.”
SelvaRamanujan, Director, MontBleu Technologies, said the company was using a mailing solution based on SaaS model. “Important mails got frequently blocked and there was no real time communication among employees. With Office 365, we managed to save money, time and effort. Features like Skype for Business and OneDrive for business reduced mail flow, improved internal communication and file sharing experience.
“The immediate saving was close to ₹50 lakh, which we would have otherwise incurred on hardware for on-premises servers, disaster recovery and so on, notwithstanding the phone and travel cost,” Ramanujan said.
Sharma admitted that mail, calendar and tasks were more extensively used in Office 365 than the team, people and other modules. “We have registered a 30 per cent growth year-on-year from SMB business. It is fuelled by digitisation and payment gateways,” he added.
Microsoft India’s SMB Business vertical is expanding through partnership. “We have 250 partners across India,” he said.
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