Satya Nadella has fired his first shot to take on competitors like Amazon, Google and SAP by wooing Indian businesses with its Azure technology.

The newly appointed boss of the world’s largest software maker has outlined his vision for taking on competition by getting Indian enterprises and small businesses to adopt cloud computing through its Azure technology platform.

In line with this, the company announced its hardware trade-in scheme for SMBs in India through which these businesses can sell their old hardware for monthly credits that can be redeemed for using Windows Azure software.

“We are at a pivotal time in our industry and users are relying on cloud and mobile computing technologies,” said Nadella, addressing more than 500 delegates through a video message at the Windows Azure conference recently.

Nadella’s confidence is backed by the fact that the $20-billion dollar business of Microsoft, is seeing many takers in emerging markets like India and the company estimates that a significant portion of its growth in India in the last 12 months has come from its cloud businesses.

New customers

According to Karan Bajwa, Managing Director, Microsoft India, the company is adding around 2,000 customers every month for its cloud computing services and feels that Azure will make continue to make strong inroads.

Customers using Azure span different businesses such as Fortis in healthcare and other sectors such as banks and automobile companies that are jumping onto this platform due to competitive pricing and flexibility to use different technologies, amongst other factors. “If you look at our strategy – we are not only building around services, which was always our strength but feel that through our recent acquisitions, we can fuel services growth through a slew of different devices,” said Tyler Bryson, General Manager, Marketing & Operations, Microsoft India.

However, Microsoft does not give out India-specific figures.

Companies, which run their business by deploying Microsoft technologies, are convinced that Azure would help them grow forward and competitors like Amazon and Google do not have some advantages.

“Getting help from Amazon is hard and companies like them and Google lack experience in dealing with the needs of Indian enterprises,” said Monish Darda, CTO, Icertis, a cloud computing company.

However, on the ground Amazon is also gearing up to get Indian businesses to use cloud computing solutions.

In the last couple of years, Amazon has been increasing its presence through partners such as Ramco, 8K Miles and others who sell Amazon technologies to India enterprises.

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