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Rajan Anandan

Microsoft : Win 7 Is Single Biggest Opportunity For Partners

Interviewed by Yogesh Gupta Mon, Dec 21, 2009

image Every existing channel partner is capable of selling Win 7 effectively. It is by far the single biggest opportunity for channels to make money in next 18 months. image

Rajan Anandan MD, Microsoft India

It’s been two months since Win 7 was launched. What has been Microsoft’s ‘India story’?

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ANANDAN: We have over 100 OEMs (laptop and desktop manufacturers) bundling Win 7. On last count, close to 100 PC models had Win 7 pre-installed and in the next couple of months, all PCs would offer it. This is an unambiguous indication of product receptivity across retail channel executed through OEMs, LFRs and multi brand stores. On commercial market (through system integrators and resellers) side, over 2000 organizations (large enterprise and mid market) in India have already started deploying it. Win 7 is the fastest growing OS globally in the history of Microsoft.

What factors are driving enterprises to migrate to a new OS in such a short time?

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ANANDAN: Most corporate accounts are executed through enterprise agreements. Organizations under these agreements (which incorporate deployment of more than one MS product) can roll out Win 7 immediately. Customers who do not have agreements can upgrade to Win 7. The 2000 plus number and addition of 100s of customers every week is primarily because Win 7 runs on lower hardware configuration, is a lot more secure and saves an average of 5000 rupees per device per year.

Do you have enough arsenals in the form of partners or do you need more alliances to propel Win 7?

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ANANDAN: Microsoft, through five distributors, has over 7000 channel partners covering 300 cities across India. Every existing channel partner is capable of selling Win 7 effectively. It is by far the single biggest opportunity for channels to make money in next 18 months. The value proposition is very compelling for corporate, public sector and almost every organization to migrate to Win 7 eventually, which translates into a large playfield for partners.

Is it a challenging proposition for partners to convince their customers to migrate to Win 7?

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ANANDAN: There is absolutely no challenge. They have to approach their customer and relate the value proposition of Win 7. The bundled encryption software saves organizations about 1500 rupees which they would have spent with other security vendor. The inbuilt energy management systems accounts for energy savings to a tune of 2000 rupees. For notebook users, one does not need VPN mode, due to presence of a ‘direct access’ feature. Other additional features result in money savings of 4000 to 7000 rupees per device per year for a customer. With Win 7, ROI is quite compelling with ‘less than a year’ time frame.

What happens to partners and their inventory stock of Microsoft Vista?

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ANANDAN: There’s very little Vista stock left in the market. But there will always be customers who will take time or continue with Vista. With a large installed base of XP OS, XP mode in Win 7 is a strong ‘one click’ feature which allows any XP compatible application to run on Win 7.

What hand holding is provided by Microsoft to empower channel partners?

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ANANDAN: We conduct training programs on a regular basis. We organized a 16 city road show before the launch in October this year and today 50 plus cities have been covered. Partners need to possess domain knowledge and encompass technical expertise to excel for this product offering. My message to channels is that whatever more capability building they want to gain on Win 7, they should reach out to us. Being a partner driven organization, we have a comprehensive team to help them sell better and faster in the market.

With thousands of partners selling ‘in demand’ Win 7, how is account mapping done to ensure enough business opportunities?

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ANANDAN: We have 100s of 1000s of customers using other Microsoft products, apart from 2000 plus companies deploying Win 7. The account mapping is done as per geography, vertical or enterprise size depending on customer need and partner profile. We need to be more visible across upcountry towns through more hand holding with partners. SMBs and mid market in these cities would readily adopt Win 7 primarily because of huge money savings. Every single channel partner should be all over Win 7 in 2010.



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