Microsoft India Eyes 50 Mn SMBs For Cloud Growth: President Anant Maheshwari [With Video]

With over 9,000 cloud partners across 250 cities across India, Microsoft India is now eyeing to tap 50 million small and medium business in the country for growth in cloud adoption. To engage SMBs across India, Microsoft has launched an initiative called “Future Decoded on Wheels".

Watch Video: Microsoft India President Anant Maheshwari | Interview

“As you look at any company today we are moving to become a software company. Whether it is a big company or a small company, the degrees of how much software and similar capabilities you use in your business varies but everybody uses software. Now, this translate into a $4.5 trillion global opportunity. In India, it is more than a $100 billion opportunity for the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge," said Microsoft India President Anant Maheshwari in an exclusive interaction with Debashis Sarkar of News18.com.

In this context of SMBs going digital, Microsoft is providing an end-to-end fabric to all scale of companies. “Big companies have more resources at their disposal to think about this cloud journey. But SMBs like to get this in a pre-packaged format and also don’t want to make significant upfront investments in going digital. They want to pay-as-you-go with the services they want. This is where the Microsoft strategy comes into play," added Maheshwari.

Also read: Microsoft Build 2017: CEO Satya Nadella Paves The Way For Intelligent Cloud

At the annual Build developer conference in May, CEO Satya Nadella had announced the shift towards intelligent cloud computing. "We are moving from what is today's mobile-first, cloud-first, to a new world that is going to be made up of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge," said Nadella at the Build 2017 keynote in Seattle. Nadella had also announced that Windows had reached 500 million monthly active users along with 100 million Commercial Office 365 monthly average users.

Providing further information on the “Future Decoded on Wheels" campaign, he said, “It is essentially a bus which carries all the broad fabrics of Microsoft in one place - the modern workplace, business applications and intelligent cloud combined with all the end-point devices. In a way, it is an opportunity for our 9,000 partners to be able to demonstrate all of that to potential SMB users across India. It will run across 25 cities.