BR Research met with Ihsan Anabtawi - Regional Lead (North Africa, East Mediterranean and Pakistan) - Microsoft Office Division. Ihsan talks about Microsoft's new offering with Cloud computing and Office 365.
BR Research: What are your thoughts regarding cloud computing and it's potential in Pakistan?
Ihsan Anabtawi: As you know this country has a widespread population with tens of thousands of small business (SMBs). Many of those SMBs don't have the capacity or the financial means to keep investing in their IT assets. We believe that the first and most immediate impact of cloud computing in a country like Pakistan is the reach of technology for many businesses who cannot keep up to date.
For Pakistan the SMBs are very important, but likewise also the enterprise, I think of it as giving big business tools to small businesses, also for large business corporations like banks and telecom operators it allows them to move their non-business applications that are not core to their operations like email, messaging and unified communication, move their data centre securely and efficiently to somebody who can deliver at a scale like Microsoft and allow them to repurpose those resources on other parts of the business.
BRR: Cloud computing is the next big thing; is Windows 8 loosely based on the cloud computing mechanism?
IA: Obviously Windows 8 and all of our products are cloud optimised, while you still have a very rich client experience on the device, a lot of things that bring value to the device are cloud-based like apps and sky drive where you get your documents and photos directly on the device. The fact that the device itself can be connected to your Microsoft account which was previously your live ID, the device becomes completely tailored based on that live ID. Whether it's your mail your documents, they all seamlessly stream down to your device. So using any Windows 8 machine, when you log on from your account, it lights up all your data present on the cloud.
We also do that with Office so once you look at Office 365, it's the whole notion of Office as a service you log into the office client and your document and settings roam with you across multiple devices. The company is not only making Windows cloud optimized but also most of our products.
BRR: Can you comment on the presence of Microsoft in Pakistan, also are there any plans for expansion?
IA: As of today we are already very present in the market, it's a market we are very committed to, we have offices in Karachi and Islamabad and we are about to launch The Microsoft innovation centre in Lahore.
BRR: You spoke of Microsoft seeking SMBs as client, since it's a widespread population and businesses are in remote areas or small cities how may they approach you?
IA: Our strategy is to depend on some key partners that have better reach in the market; we are also keen on gaining other partners like Telco's and associations that can help us reach those SMBs. We are very clear on aligning ourselves with business partners and have no plan for coming in and doing it on our own. We can't scale on our own; hence we will depend heavily on resellers and associations of such nature.
BRR: Why don't you invest more in Pakistan, we are ranked high in ease of doing business globally?
IA: We find this to be a high opportunity market with all the right elements hence we are eager to grow in it. If you look at Microsoft's presence in Pakistan now and look at it 2-3 years ago you'll see a very different picture. It depends on which part of investments you are looking into we just invested in the innovation centre opening in Lahore last week. I believe we are more present than any of our counter parts in the technology industry. We have 50 employees in our offices here; we have the largest ecosystem of business partners in the country as well.
Our model is not to come in and employ an army of people and do everything ourselves, our model is to empower local companies through training and readiness as much as the business needs. Our presence in the region helps us mobilise any resources that we may require in immediate effect, however most of the time we try to engage local partners.
BRR: When using partners as a front face, does that not affect the quality or image you try to set in front of clients in terms of quality assurance?
IA: We have ways to address it, it's not like we just put people in our channel. We have ways to select our partners and we have a process every year to check up on them. There are evaluations held every year, not every partner gets renewed.
Most strategic projects, the ones that are big or require a multiyear plan and more technical capabilities are lead by us from a delivery stand point and we have partners sub-contracted. We'll do quality assurance work or architectural work, but then partners will also do development and delivery, so it's a joint effort, but we definitely have mechanisms to ensure quality and satisfactory delivery.
BRR: What are your concerns regarding intellectual property rights in Pakistan? And the losses Microsoft faces due to it?
IA: This is not unique to Pakistan, its higher here only because of the sheer size of the country, we have two ways to look at it, firstly we focus on consumer awareness we need consumers to understand that pirated software and piracy in general, for them it compromises their data and their security. Take the simplest form of piracy for example a laptop, they invested in the hardware and then did not complete it with the proper software, and that potentially compromises the investment that they made and it could have serious issues in that machine. Most of the time consumers are victims to piracy they do not know of; they only trust the vendor, we make an effort to contest this issue.
Secondly there is prevention of intellectual property. We ensure that people in our channel respect intellectual property. We are very adamant in taking measures in the channel to assure enforcement. In terms of the local economy, if companies see that people are not paid for their effort, it would hinder creativity and innovations.
We've been thinking of countering piracy with cloud computing. Since we own the software piracy is reduced dramatically then given that we charge on a monthly basis it associates the mechanism with the culture in the country as you pay your electricity bill and phone bill, it would be just like another payment which is not very expensive; the P1 plan which is our basic model of Office 365 costs only $6 per user per month. There is no upfront capital expenditure many people in the region culturally shy away from buying software upfront.
BRR: This technology is somewhat similar to the inbox mechanism. Can you please outline the advantages of the cloud environment to a hosted one?
IA: Consider using a different device other than your own, from your inbox you take an excel file, now you may read/write that excel file only if you have MS Office on that device. Now with cloud computing MS Office is already present on the cloud you don't require the device to host MS Office regardless of whatever computer you may use whether it be iOS, Android or any other operating system.
BRR: What are your concerns regarding internet downtime. How would that impact the cloud's viability?
IA: Pakistan has the highest internet penetration in the region with a track record of 10 years; I don't believe Pakistan would have a downtime issue, unless many years ago if you remember the submarine cable got cut. Otherwise we have got the finest ISPs, one of the cheapest internet service providers in the world.
Internet penetration is available via multiple mediums we have DSL, fiber, Wi-max and many other forms of service. Most businesses in the country are already heavily dependent on the internet, companies use a VPN that connects them to their data centre through the internet only.
BRR: Who is your target market and how are you connecting yourselves with that market?
IA: We cater for all audiences whether it is households, small businesses, large corporations or education centres. For marketing we have different campaigns mainly digital, reaching customers through mail. We also have telemarketing teams and we allow our partners to do a lot of marketing for us, because we believe our resources are better spent in the local ecosystem.