Microsoft's mobile-first, cloud-first fit for India's needs

New York, Jul 19: Microsoft's India-born CEO Satya Nadella's emphasis on "mobile-first, cloud-first world" fits well into India's needs as the strategy will ensure affordable technology to millions of small businesses, a senior company executive has said.

"India is definitely in the most exciting stages right now. We have millions of small businesses that are beginning to understand that technology can be helpful to businesses and grow their top line and bottom line," General Manager – SMS&P (Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners) at Microsoft India, Meetul Patel said on the sidelines of the just concluded Microsoft Worldwide Conference in Orlando.

The challenge for small and medium businesses in India and other emerging countries until now has been affordability, access to technology, ability to administer technology and its applications, Patel told PTI.

"Nadella's talk about the mobile-first, cloud-first world, in my mind...fits very well to what India or any other emerging market would need, especially India, because the mobile world makes it much more affordable, there are new devices and form factors that allow you to access technology like never before," Patel said citing the example of smartphones, tablets and personal computers.

Terming cloud and mobility as game-changers, Patel said businesses can plug in to the cloud and get access to computing power.

"The beauty of this is that the smallest businesses, that one or two person shop in a tier three city in India has the same access to the same technology as the largest bank on Wall Street.(The only difference is) one is using it a lot, one is using it a little less. That takes accessibility to a completely different level," he said.

In his vision keynote address to the conference last week, Nadella had talked about Microsoft's focus on 'mobile-first, cloud-first' world where he said the computing that people are going to interface with in their lives will be "ubiquitous".

Nadella, 47, who took over as the third CEO in the history of the tech giant in February last year, had said that cloud will act as a control plane that allows one to have that capability to move from device to device on any given day at any given meeting.

Patel added that the strategy addresses questions of affordability and accessibility as well as power issues that pose a challenge in India's tier two and three cities.

Patel said Microsoft's programs like the Cloud Solution Provider allows partners to evolve in the world of cloud and offer solutions through the cloud that will help the Indian small business.

"If you see what is required to help Indian small businesses adopt technology, the answer is we need something affordable, low maintenance, ease of pay as go, scale up and scale down at will and which is world class in nature.

"It is perfectly made for India. Just the way the mobile phone came in at the right time to allow communications to thrive, cloud and mobility have done the same things for IT in general for the Indian markers as well," Patel said.

PTI