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'Its time India Inc moved from services to products'

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

HYDERABAD: The country has seen a sizable growth in revenues in software

services and now it is high time to take a look at software product development.

It may be because of the fact that Indian IT firms spend far less than US firms

on R&D. Microsoft has its presence in terms of research and development

activities in the country. Microsoft India Development Center managing director

Srini Koppolu spoke to Zia Askari on issues relating to product development

here. Srini was in Hyderabad to speak at a seminar organized by Hysea, the

Hyderabad Software Exporters Association.

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What are the challenges that a company faces while developing products in

the software arena?



Developing products is not an easy task as there are millions of customers

whose demands and needs have to be fulfilled. Above all, a company may never

know what its customers want, so it becomes very critical for a company to keep

evolving its products according to the market.

What are the factors critical for a company developing products and how

can it cope with issues related to product development?




One of the key factors is time. As in the market, there is always a big
advantage in being the first mover. You need an organization with a unique

culture with open communication of ideas, designs, feedback and suggestions. A

product company needs people with passion -- a passion for products and

technology, and passion to make a difference. The timing one chooses to market

is the most important aspect of any product development and a company should

always avoid analysis paralysis. You don't need to wait until you have enough

facts to be 100 per cent sure, by that time it will be too late. Distance from

the market is also an important factor as it is also good for a company to be as

close to the market as possible or develop products for the market that you are

in. Winning the market share is also important so a product should be designed

to win market share.

What should be the main objective of a products company?



The primary objective should always be to make sure that the product is best
suited to the market and the business needs of the organization. Simplicity is

also a key issue as far as designing a product is concerned. This apart, one has

to think internationally and geo-politically and write features that are

accessible to everyone. Customer satisfaction is the other area that one has to

concentrate on while developing a product.

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What is the development model at your R&D center here?



There are two ways of conceptualizing a software design: one is to make it

so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make

it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is

far more difficult. At Microsoft we practice a model wherein we first define a

product, then we design, test and deliver it to the market.

We at MS practice milestone-based product development. This idea gives us the

advantage of improving specs and design as we move forward in the development of

the product. We develop features in phases and improve quality in stages. For

us, each milestone is a mini-product - either for internal use or external, we

take time to pause, take stock and do course of correction if needed. That is

how we have developed our products out of Hyderabad R&D center.

On the products front, Microsoft has developed and released Visual J# .net, a

Java language development tool. The product is part of the Microsoft India

Development Center's product Banjara initiative for the .Net platform. It is

designed to enable Java language programmers to immediately migrate to the .Net

platform.

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More than 35 engineers had been working on the development of the product for

the past two years. This is the second product developed and conceived by the

company's R&D facility in Hyderabad. The first product released was Services

For Unix (SFU).

The beta 1 version of the product is already made available through MSDN. The

beta 2 version is likely to be ready by the first quarter of the next year and a

final release is likely by middle of next year. The development center in

Hyderabad is also working on an add-on for Outlook Express, which is likely to

be released next year.

What process do you undertake to ensure products usefulness?



To make our products more useful and usable we incorporate user information into
all stages of the product design cycle. We work with product teams to ensure the

utility and usability of MS products and then create product prototypes for

testing them.

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