CIOL: MSIDC has contributed heavily to MS Products. What is its role in terms of adding value to STB products portfolio?

BM: MSIDC significantly contributes to the STB portfolio. For instance, it has done significant work for the upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2 and has contributed heavily to the presentation virtualization features. Each of STB products derives significant value from MSIDC.

CIOL: Microsoft is pitching hard on the cost advantages. Can you talk about the RoI in terms of competing products, say SQL and Oracle?

BM: Oracle is quite expensive compared to SQL: we are five times lesser the cost as compared to Oracle. We have seen cases like a leading Oracle user going in for SQL which demonstrates the cost advantages we are talking about. Moreover, yet another great optimizer which leads to greater RoI are our state of the art virtualization features that make for creating simple and agile IT. When we stack each of the products in the STB portfolio with competition, including open source, our products offer greater value in terms of TCO as well as RoI.

CIOL: Given the overall gloom in IT spending and the slowdown in the economy, whats the strategy that STB has put in place?

BM: Our core strategy remains unchanged. We deliver what the customer wants. We are creating a cohesive strategy so that all our earlier versions can perfectly co-exist with new versions. We are poised to deliver high functional products with great emphasis on cost effectiveness. For instance, if you look at the Windows Server 2008 R2, we have tweaked the functionality significantly.

It will support large systems with multiple processors, huge data warehousing capabilities, more manageability and greater virtualization capabilities. All this is the result of the feedback from our customers, who drive us to come with products that bring significant value. Emerging markets are certainly a very big opportunity for us. We are already seeing huge traction in markets like India for our server offerings, and we see that India and China are huge growth markets. Our approach is extremely customer centric and this is the key to STB delivering such great products.

CIOL: Can you share some of the major product updates on the anvil from STB going forward?

BM: The Windows Server 2008 R2 is going to be a significant development. Features like Virtual Machine Manager that support live migration, are great features that will enable enterprises to gain greater control in managing their data. Next year we will scale out a version of our data warehousing for SQL, and a new edition of Visual Studio is also in the pipeline.

CIOL: What is your outlook given the current economic conditions?

BM: While there would be slight saturation in developed markets, the emerging markets will continue to grow. The need for IT is always there despite the slowdown and a challenging environment.. I think the only way to manage the business challenges in a down economy is to use technology to resolve customer issues. IT faces same set of basic challenges and the key differentiator is delivering cost effective functional and robust solutions.