Bengaluru: Microsoft has joined hands with IT trade bodies and channel partners to enhance the company’s presence in the small and medium enterprise (SME) segment, states an ET tech report.
The trade bodies help the SMEs in proper understanding and utilization of technology resources which helps harness their growth and access potential customers, especially in Tier II and III cities.
The company has always largely banked on partner led strategy, and at present has 10,000 partners across the country, it said in the report.
The Make in India initiative which encourages multi-nationals and home-grown companies to manufacture their products in India will create more jobs, boosting manufacturing output and exports. All of these engages the SME sector in a significant way – be it in automotive, retail, manufacturing, defense and aerospace, or electronics. With this is perspective, Microsoft prudently aims to tap sector.
The report quoted, Amit Kumar, general manager, small and mid-market solutions and partners, Microsoft, as saying, “Out of 1,50,000 SMB customer base in India, nearly 25¬-30% are already on cloud. Over 3,500 ISVs have joined to operate their businesses on Microsoft cloud platform in the past three years. Currently, over 40% of Azure’s revenue comes from ISVs and startups.”
Microsoft’s offerings like the Office 365, Skype for Business and CRM Online, Microsoft Azure, and EMM among others have been a pull for the start-ups and medium enterprises.
According to Gartner, most organizations are already using a combination of cloud services from different cloud providers. While public cloud usage will continue to increase, the use of private cloud and hosted private cloud services is also expected to increase at least through 2017.
The increased use of multiple public cloud providers, plus growth in various types of private cloud services, will create a multi-cloud environment in most enterprises and a need to coordinate cloud usage using hybrid scenarios.
Since the inception of this initiative, Microsoft had managed to reach out to 85,000 SMEs through trade bodies in six states such as UP, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and West Bengal.