We’re trying to be a complete solutions provider: Microsoft

Microsoft doesn’t want to be seen as just a company that makes Windows and Office. It is trying to reinvent itself to become a complete IT solutions provider by shifting itself from a products-centric approach.

“What we are trying to define is to take our story beyond technology. We are trying to solve a problem for the customer,” Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik told BusinessLine in an interview emphasising that now he doesn’t see the likes of IBM as competition anymore but companies such as Google and Amazon that have dominant positions in their respective spheres.

“Previously, we were very competition obsessed product and technology focused. Now, we are customer obsessed and innovation focused,” he said talking about its focus shift in India in the past few years.

He feels India remains a strong growth market for Microsoft even though certain areas such as the hardware business haven’t really seen much adoption here. Pramanik feels not being a big electronic hardware player shouldn’t be a big deal for the company as it has bigger plans beyond the hardware.

Bets on Lumia mobiles “Very clearly we are not looking at domination through hardware market share. We’d obviously like to be in Apple’s shoes. They make 85 per cent of profits in the phone business. Everybody else makes a loss. We’d love to be in that. But we’ve realised that it's not going to be by either copying Apple or copying any of the Chinese companies. It has to be built on the uniqueness that we offer.”

Pramanik pointed towards Microsoft’s mobile phone models Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL, which double up as a PC, trying to create a new category altogether, as an example of how Microsoft is building its niche segment within the mobile hardware space.

He said for Microsoft what’s more important than selling the hardware is to enter Internet of Things (IoT) market and make Windows available on every device, right from the in-car entertainment system to a wind mill. “We are looking at mobility of experience right across. There are two strategies to that — Windows 10 on every device but the other one is to have Microsoft services on every device,” he said.

India will play a big role in that transition. He said India is amongst the top three high growth markets for Microsoft.

“We currently have 40 per cent share in the cloud market in India. This time last year we were at 34 per cent. Our SaaS (Software-as-a-service revenue) has gone up to 43 per cent (of the overall India market) and we've grown our infrastructure-as-a-service to about 9.4 per cent. These market shares are actually not truly indicative because the overall cloud market is still just about 20-30 per cent of the IT market in India. For us, it is not about the share but about growing the market,” Pramanik said.

Cloud, especially with local data centres, is also helping the company enter new markets in India. “We had very little presence in manufacturing but with IoT, we are seeing a lot of opportunity, he said. A large number of companies have moved to Microsoft since we set up local data centres. For example, many BFSI customers have moved to Microsoft cloud from a productivity perspective.”

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