NEW DELHI, INDIA: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) has gained appreciable traction in the enterprise  market over the last few years.  As of FY 07 08, Microsoft has sold 100 million licenses for SharePoint generating sales of $1 billion worldwide. 

The Microsoft figures point out17000 businesses use SharePoint to tackle their information management needs and to enable employees to collaborate with team members. In India SharePoint revenue have grown by 56% CAGR over the last 4 years and company has over 100 customers on MOSS 2007 in India.

However, analysts have been questioning MOSS capability to scale well in comparison with IBM Websphere. They have also raised doubts about social networking tools for Share Point, which analysts, opine are less advanced and quite uninspiring, when compared to social networking tools in enterprise today.

Idhries Ahmad of CIOL caught with Sanjay Manchanda, director, Microsoft Business Division (India) to put forward his side of story.

Sanjay also talked in detail how Microsoft plans to ward threat from about the  IBM/Lotus and company plans to partner or acquire any other big social networking players to improve its social networking bouquet.

Sanjay also talks about trend of Indian enterprises waking up to social-computing tools and technologies.

CIOL: Can you pinpoint specific reasons as to why Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) has been received well by customers?. Please detail some features why enterprises should deploy MOSS 2007?.

Sanjay Manchanda: We have seen tremendous response to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) which is an integrated platform for enterprise search, content management, business intelligence, collaboration and corporate portals. Today, these are critical parts of an enterprise's IT infrastructure.

Customers not only like the ROI delivered by some of the out-of-box capabilities, but also the fact that MOSS is extensible and can be customized to meet specific business requirements, such as business process workflows or employee self-service portals.

The second important reason for rapid adoption of MOSS 2007 by customers is that users can easily access its functionality not only from a Web browser, but also seamlessly from Microsoft Office, which they use every day.

The strength and completeness of MOSS 2007 has also been validated by industry analysts like Gartner, who have positioned Microsoft as a leader in their MQ for Horizontal Portals, Enterprise Content Management and Information Access Technology for 2008.  

SM: As of FY 07-08, Microsoft has sold a record 100 million licenses for SharePoint generating sales of $1 billion worldwide. 

Today, over 17,000 businesses use SharePoint to tackle their most pressing information management needs and to enable employees to collaborate with team members, search and create social networks for experts and corporate information, manage content and workflow, and leverage business insight to make better-informed decisions.

In India, SharePoint revenue has grown by 56% CAGR over the last 4 years. We have over a 100 customers on MOSS 2007 including companies like TCS, Wipro, Cognizant, HCL Technologies, Patni Systems, Zensar Technologies, Chembur Nagrik bank, Mahindra & Mahindra and Larsen & Toubro etc.