CIOL: In your view, how liberal are SMBs in their IT spends?
MW: Most analysts are unanimous in their belief that all organizations will re-assess their spending in the wake of the global economic crisis. They will modify their IT strategy from a focus on revenue generation/growth to an approach aimed at improving operational efficiencies and cost savings.

According to an AMI Partners study, a majority of small businesses (SBs) in India feel that the economy will have an impact on their business over the next 12 months.

Almost 80 per cent believe that the local economies will impact their business – with around 60 per cent feeling it will have a very strong impact. While a lesser proportion of SBs feel so about the impact of that on the global economies.

Springboard, the analyst firm, differs here and actually places India among countries which will run a lower risk as far as a significant IT spending slowdown in 2009 is concerned along with China and Vietnam.

Springboard also believes that cost concerns will drive a primary focus on IT infrastructure consolidation among more mature SMBs, especially mid-market organizations.

Liquidity seems to be the topmost challenge for SMBs going and likely to remain a priority into next year. According to AMI Partners the lease/finance model will also start seeing more adoption.

CIOL: How has Microsoft engaged itself with the SMB community globally as well as India to further enable their sustainable growth?
MW: Microsoft has a very extensive engagement with the SMB community globally and in India. Microsoft’s annual investment of approximately $6.5 billion in SMB yields products, programs and incentives that deliver clear value and ROI that SMBs are looking for to build their business. Similar to our global reach, in India our engagement with the community is multi pronged. 

Microsoft is among the first vendors in India to work with SMBs and since have had a deep and extensive engagement with them. It is the fastest growing part of business at Microsoft and represents a significant share of the revenues.

Even against the backdrop of the recent downturn, SMBs are more resilient to changes than larger enterprises are and at Microsoft we are reaching out to them even more extensively to handhold them during these tough times.

CIOL: Any new initiatives from Microsoft to address the SMBs in the current year?
MW: Given the challenges which the recent downturn has brought to the SMBs, we believe that it is critical that we engage with the SMB community in an even more abiding way. SMBs are seeking hand-holding. To help reach out to them, the OEM business has recently added a layer of sub distributors to their earlier model of distributors.

Microsoft hopes to add a total of 14 associate distributors to the model. This layer of sub distributors will facilitate reaching out to the small businesses in India across over 200 cities.

We have also come up with a BizSpark programme – a global program designed to accelerate the success of IT entrepreneurs through software support and a vibrant ecosystem – in the country. BizSpark will provide Indian start-ups with software, support and visibility at a time in the lifecycle when they are most valuable and least affordable - during their first three years, with no upfront costs and minimal requirements.

Microsoft BizSpark is structured to help start-ups take advantage of the resources and support of a global network of hundreds of organizations: economic development agencies, university incubators, hosters and investors.

We are also constantly innovating to bring the best of breed products to our SMB customers and we have recently added Microsoft Dynamics NAV BE and integrated ERP solution designed especially for the growing businesses. We have also recently added the Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008 to our offerings for this space.