The Hindu Business Line : Microsoft sees strong Indian interest for Azure platform

Bangalore, June 2 Microsoft Corp sees strong interest from Indian IT vendors for its Azure services platform as companies gear up to build applications using cloud computing.

The platform is hosted in Microsoft’s data centres and provides an operating system and developer services to build applications to run from cloud as well as enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities.

“India is at a beautiful inflection point and companies are moving away from merely delivering services to building applications based on IP,” said Mr Amitabh Srivastava, Senior Vice-President, Microsoft. “We stay committed to India.”

Some of the Indian IT vendors are part of Microsoft’s Technology Adoption Program (TAP), which gives them access to Microsoft’s development teams as well as a hands-on experience of the platform. The company said there is a lot of interest from Indian IT vendors.

“There is no commitment that members of TAP will use the platform,” said Mr Srivastava. “Normally, they are focused developers and have more than just a little bit of interest.” The Indian companies do not have too much of a legacy to hold them back, which makes it easier for them to adopt new technology, he said.

The Azure platform would be commercially available by the end of the year.

Companies such as Infosys and Wipro are looking to build IP-based solutions that are expected to help them move away from the people-based billing model. The latest NASSCOM-McKinsey report also stated that IT vendors would have to drive non-linear revenue by leveraging IP.

Mr Srivastava said the Azure platform can drive costs down and help companies take their applications to the market faster. One of the advantages is that the users do not have to worry about the management of the hardware. Also, the platform enables companies scale the applications they have built.

Microsoft is working with its partners to understand client requirement, usage patterns to make sure the platform has the right features to address the business objectives of the users. It expects the platform to be net additive to its business.

“The cloud is an extension of on-premise IT. New generations of applications will come in with the cloud and that will open up new revenue stream,” said Mr Srivastava.

Some customers will shift from one model to the other, but the company has factored that in, he added.

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