‘Office 365 empowers youths’

Pushing their business in new directions with the advance product Office 365, Microsoft is bullish on nurturing profits with a different approach. In a tete-a-tete with Ram Kumar Pichai, General Manager, Microsoft Office Division, Bhawna Satsangi finds out company’s growth plan and how Office 365 providing opportunities for 21^st generation students.

What is the present focus of Microsoft now?

Microsoft is defining the future of productivity, entertainment and communication across the globe. Transforming from software to a devices and services company requires us to make big, bold bets and push our business in new directions. We are incredibly well and uniquely positioned to delight our customers with stunning new Windows PCs, tablets and phones that light up with world-class entertainment, communications and productivity services. The new Office is our next bold step forward. It’s a productivity service that is a trusted and integral part of our always-on, always-connected lives.

What is your go to market strategy to sell the products?

Microsoft is and always has been a company that is fully invested in its partner ecosystem – our partners account for 95 percent of the company’s overall revenue. We offer a clear path to success for partners and invest deeply in the partner ecosystem. Office 365 enables partners to reach millions of customers more easily, to deliver more complete services and to unlock new business opportunities.

In a difficult scenario where the industry is going down, how do you maintain your profits and what strategy do you develop to add value to the business?

Microsoft’s vision is to enable Individuals and Businesses around the world to realize their full potential. With this, we are able to add value even during the toughest of times. During tough times, businesses and individuals look more for cutting costs and improving productivity, that’s exactly the business Microsoft is in.

Look at Office 365, in spite of difficulties in the economy, Office 365 is on track to become one of the fastest growing offers in Microsoft history. Office 365 is an enterprise class software that has Exchange for mail, SharePoint for collaboration and document management, Lync for instant messaging and PC to PC calling coupled with our Office applications and this entire portfolio is available on Cloud as a service so that customers of any size from SOHO to large enterprises.

Globally, 1 in 5 Microsoft enterprise business customers are now using Office 365 (up from 1 in 7 last year).
We’ve seen a 150% increase in small and medium sized businesses using Office 365 in just the past 12 months

What is your channel strategy?

Microsoft’s growing partner network plays a major role in catering to the needs of businesses of all sizes. Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) in India focuses on a competency-led approach to bring focus into partner operation and customer satisfaction. Now that Cloud has landed for real for businesses in India, it is important for us to educate our partners to move to the cloud and upscale their businesses.

We see that cloud is helping partners get a foot in the door and, once they have that relationship, they are able to sell in all sorts of solutions that are both cloud-based and on-premises. A hybrid approach still rings true with customers, and high-performing partners are capitalizing on this.

From which cities the business is likely to come more? Are you focusing more on the tier 2 and 3 cities for the business?

Microsoft is moving closer to the SMBs through the geo-expansion program, with its presence in 250 cities in India through its hub and spoke model, out of which 65 are Tier II cities.

Microsoft has witnessed strong year-on-year growth till date in excess of 50% across the 250 cities and stronger in specific segments like academic and healthcare.
Through the Geo-expansion program, Microsoft has reached out to more than 20,000 customers across the country that is enabled by more than 4500 partners.
In the Tier II & III cities, Microsoft has been witnessing enhanced reception from sectors like: Healthcare, Higher Education, IT Services, Public Administration & Cooperative Banking.

Also, Microsoft recently hosted the Completely Boss Challenge promoting SMBs in India and giving them the opportunity to have the 5-year growth plans for their businesses developed by industry experts.

What are the strategies you have developed for the SMBs?

SMBs can speed up business growth by adopting cloud computing. Cloud, like the social media, is transforming the way SMBs do business. Microsoft offers the most comprehensive suite of cloud services coupled with scalable on-premise solutions. SMBs can choose between either or any combination of the two that meets their requirements. Microsoft cloud services are tailored for business of all sizes and offer superior value to SMBs on an opex model.

We are seeing good momentum for Office 365 in India. It offers real value to the SMBs, available on a per-user-per-month subscription basis. The service offerings range from $2 to $24 per user per month, depending on the options the customer wants. Microsoft has also tied up with Bharti Airtel to deliver Office 365 to SMBs by provisioning the service through its cloud platform.

You had launched office 365 for college students this year. How has been the sale of the product and how much is it helping in earning the revenue for the company?

Office 365 University is built on the company’s philosophy of empowering youth to imagine and realize their full potential by connecting them with greater opportunities for education, employment and entrepreneurship.

Office 365 University – at the best price – will provide opportunities for students to develop the necessary skills to be successful in the 21st century, making them future ready as they join the workforce of tomorrow.

What exactly is Microsoft doing to increase the office 365 adoption through channels and solution partners? What schemes are being funnelled thru SPs?

Microsoft is moving to the Devices and Services way. This is the direction in which our partner ecosystem is also aligning. The way in which we look at this is

(A) Getting the partners cloud ready: Ensuring that the partners know that there is money to be made in the cloud, and ensuring that they have the necessary to sell cloud and be able to support our customers. This we call “Cloud Essentials”

(B) Getting partners to execute: The next is getting the partners who are ready to execute on the O365 is to get them to execute deals of certain sizes. Help them hunt for deals and ensure that Microsoft is with them so that they close their first few deals. This we call “Cloud Accelerate”

(C) Getting partners to hunt and harvest big deals: The next is getting the partners to get to execute larger deals and consistently on their own. This is a process of enabling partners to actually establish their own hunt and harvest mechanism for bigger opportunities. This we call “Cloud Activate”.

In this process we have taken feedback from our existing partners, on their desire to grow top line and bottom line, as invoicing customers was happening directly by Microsoft with respect to cloud. We have incorporated that input, and now, customers can buy O365 through traditional Volume Licensing model, and the partner can invoice the customer, thereby adding to their top line as well.

We have chosen to incentivise partners for cloud disproportionately, as compared to the on-premise products. This enables partners to move to cloud faster as they see lot more money in terms of both top line and bottom line. Microsoft is also ensuring that there is enough market pull on O365. We have making un-precedented marketing investments in ensuring demand generation as well.

How can channels in small cities increase their profitability by aligning with this initiative?

Irrespective of where the partners are, Microsoft is enabling them to sell cloud though the 3 levels of cloud enablement that we talked about. This is well suited for any partner who wants to increase their profitability by selling O365.

How MS is helping curb issue of undercutting of price points with this?

O365 is standard pricing if bought directly from Microsoft (in which case the referring partner gets some good incentive), or bought through Volume Licensing and this is a recurring fee, as Microsoft incurs infrastructure costs (in terms of datacentre costs). Hence, this cannot be discounted. Unless a partner wants to give customer something else as a free/discounted add on as a point in time marketing promotion, there cannot be this undercutting.

What were the challenges you face while selling the product?

Microsoft Office 365 University is now available in India for full-time and part-time enrolled university and college students in accredited institutions. Nine reasons higher-education students will love Office 365 University:

The best of Office: Includes the new Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access
The best price: INR 4,199 for a 4-year subscription
Four years: If college takes more than four years, renew once for a total of eight years of Office 365 University
Digital note-taking: Take notes with touch, pen or keyboard in OneNote and keep them handy in the cloud and across multiple devices
Save to SkyDrive: Office 365 University saves documents to SkyDrive by default, so content is always available across devices
More storage: Additional 20 GB Premium SkyDrive Storage leading to a total of 27 GB
New upgrades: Get future upgrades and enhancements
Two installations: Install Office 365 University on up to two computers (PC or Mac) for one user
Office on Demand: Use it even when you are away from your PC by streaming full-featured Office to an Internet-connected Windows-based PC.

Where is the growth likely to come from?

The new Office 365 aligns to the industry mega trends for businesses to take advantage of the following:

Office is being delivered through the cloud
- Office 365 is an enterprise-grade cloud solution with robust security, guaranteed reliability and compliant with world’s industry standards
- The new Office is always logged-in and saves to the cloud by default
- The next-generation Office 365 is more social than ever. SharePoint integrates with Yammer and Lync to provide a social layer that brings people and teams together to collaborate and share organizational knowledge and information.
- The new Office works great across all your devices, but on Windows 8 it shines, you get a more immersive, touch-optimized experience. You can use Office across all your devices, including new Windows 8 tablets and Windows Phones as well as PCs and Macs.
  - Office 365 can be installed on up to five devices for a single user under the Office 365 licensing.
  - The new Office also provides better control for IT management and compliance. Office 365 is a true productivity suite designed from the ground up to meet business requirements for security, privacy, reliability and manageability.