''Microsoft IT is Microsoft's first and best customer"

Microsoft dominates the IT apps space with a slew of products accessed everyday by millions across the world. As an enterprise, how does Microsoft manage its IT requirements internally? For starters, it's been done through an internal organization called Microsoft IT. Microsoft IT works with Microsoft products from the prerelease version to the release and the manufacturing (RTM) version. India plays a strategic role for MS-IT, as 50% of its four thousand strong IT organization workforce is based out of Hyderabad. The MS-IT India is a 4-year-old organization. It functions as the offshore arm of strategic Centers of Excellence (CoE).

Microsoft IT-India utilizes a variety of niche technologies that are deployed for internal Microsoft use. In an exclusive interview to Shrikanth G of Dataquest, Neil Leslie, VP Microsoft IT and Moorthy Uppaluri, GM Microsoft IT-India, walk through the mission critical nature of the center and how MS-IT is a springboard in showcasing the benefits of various Microsoft products.

What is Microsoft ITs strategic importance?

Neil: It is all about delivering business value and that comes from testing and deploying our various products for internal consumption. This helps in leveraging the product functionalities and customers can see the merits of the products in various enterprise application scenarios. Microsoft IT assumes strategic importance as enterprises are in the midst of consolidation of the IT assets from server to applications to networking. So, by creating seamless IT entities-the Centers of Excellence (CoEs), we are able to leverage all our products and create a seamless infrastructure that operates on a 24x7 basis and forms the key to improving organizational efficiencies, and bring in the best possible customer experience.

Moorthy Uppaluri, GM Microsoft IT India

What are the key deliverables Microsoft IT provides for the organization?

Neil: Microsoft IT positively impacts our business partners by enabling programs, driving up revenue and CPE, and driving down costs. Our ultimate project deliverables are complete solutions that address people, process and technology elements to bring about the desired business results. We conduct a rigorous business case analysis to make project-funding decisions, and we align to the company through a set of governance bodies with representatives from our stakeholder groups. These governance bodies ensure tight alignment between business strategies and IT investments, and we share joint measures of success.

Some of the key projects in the current year include:

• Improvements to the Global Marketing Platform

• Infrastructure for our Partner programs (MSPP) and Partner Sales Management

• Improvements licensing, pricing, and agreement processing systems

• Improvements call center incident management

• Improvements HR performance management

Do you have an enterprise IT paradigm deployed in all locations of Microsoft?

Neil: Over the past two years, Microsoft IT centralized many IT functions and standardized the model for stakeholder engagement, development, and operations.  Our organization is based around Solution Delivery (SD) organizations, which engage with the business stakeholders and have end-to-end accountability for defining and implementing solutions that meet the business needs. The CoE takes care of the development, testing, and maintenance of tools and infrastructure. We have also created a field IT organization that standardizes our approach to implementation and adoption, while also taking account of regional and local differences around the globe.

By adopting technologies that Microsoft develops, does Microsoft IT serve new technology proof-points where enterprises can see the benefits of that technology first-hand?

Moorthy: One of Microsoft IT's key roles is to act as Microsoft's 'first and best customer'.  The organization is an early implementer of Microsoft technologies and engages extensively in beta programs.  Microsoft IT provides bug reports and design change requests to the product teams based on our experiences, and in this way, we catch many of the critical bugs before they reach our customer.

Neil Leslie, VP, Microsoft IT

What about the product feedback that MS IT gives?

Neil: We provide the product development teams with valuable feedback on product features and functionalities. This feedback improves Microsoft products throughout the software development life cycle, and helps Microsoft customers and partners successfully deploy these products and technologies.

How critical is MS IT India?

Neil: It is a seamless extension of the global Microsoft IT teams in Redmond. This is because all our critical applications are based out of here and the kind of value MS IT India provides for the organization is just phenomenal.

Moorthy: We at Microsoft IT India believe that business success is driven by an organization's ability to manage information and optimize their greatest asset, their people, for results. Software is one of the most powerful tools an organization can employ to amplify the impact of its people.

Can you tell us about the Network Operations Center in Hyderabad?

Moorthy: It's a mission critical entity and a nerve center for Microsoft. The Microsoft Network Operations Center (NOC) in Hyderabad was established in November 2004.  From the NOC campus in Hyderabad, we manage Microsoft's worldwide IT infrastructure 24x7. The team monitors and supports 9,000 servers, 10,000 network devices, over 2,000 internal databases and the telephony services within the company. This is the primary operations center for Microsoft.

The NOC is also a big showcase for all customers. Given how we run the infrastructure-extremely efficiently, with a very high server to operator ratio-the customers really want to spend time with MS IT to learn how they can reduce the cost of running their Windows infrastructure. While this is the primary NOC for Microsoft, some FTE presence is maintained in Redmond during business hours to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery.

What about Microsoft IT India's role in Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista?

Moorthy: The Microsoft IT applications use features of office. When a new version of software is to be released, MS needs to guarantee that the Line of Business or LoB, is not affected. This entire procedure is called compatibility testing. A large percentage of the compatibility testing has been done out of Microsoft IT India for both Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista.

Besides Compatibility Testing, Microsoft IT India also played a major role in dogfooding Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. Dogfooding is also a method adopted by Microsoft to let its customers know that it is confident of its product.  It also allows Microsoft to understand the product's capabilities and challenges so that any enhancement or modification can be done on time. Hence, it is first deployed internally within the organization, before it is shipped for production. Microsoft IT India has contributed significantly towards ensuring the quality of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007.

Source:  Dataquest