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MS's new Symphony integrates OEM

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CIOL Bureau
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CHENNAI, INDIA: Microsoft seems to be in a process of integrating its OEM and volume licensing division into one under an initiative called 'Symphony', where sales executives of the company and partners, who were selling either OEM or volume licensing, would be able to deal with both.

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The announcement is expected to be made from Microsoft by this week. The company has already started conveying the information to its sales executives in both the divisions and among major distributors.

Earlier, there persisted many confusions within the channels as executives from both the divisions used to market their product, whereas the channels were lacking a clarity on who should deal with which product. It often led to a series of problems and in some cases the legality of the licenses was also brought under scrutiny. With this integration process, Microsoft’s sales executives are expected to deal with both OEM as well as the volume licensing products, and this accounts for few distributive partners also, who were distributing or dealing exclusively for OEM or volume licensing.

The channels feel that this integration would bring an end to the internal competition within both the teams of Microsoft. “In one way, this is a major advantage for the channels, as they would be interacting with one single sales team and the confusions will be limited,” opined S Karthikeyan, CEO, Bloom Computers, Coimbatore.

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However, he is not clear whether any dealer or distributor would be allowed to deal with both the OEM as well as paper licenses; he claimed that it will take some time for the company to communicate more information to the partners.

Even Devesh Agarwal, President, Infotech Software Dealers Association (ISODA) said that the association is awaiting more clarity from Microsoft. “I am aware about the integration only in my capacity as the President of ISODA, however as a software dealer, I am still awaiting for some proper communication. On the other hand, I feel that combining both the divisions would bring in more confusion to the channels, as each one is dealing with different products and they need more training from Microsoft to deal with both the type of licenses,” Agarwal claimed.

Pointing out that there is no legal presence of Microsoft in India, Alok Gupta, CEO, Softmart, Delhi said that the integration is more of a cosmetic change for Microsoft, which doesn’t make any change in the way business is carried out by the channels.

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He further said that it could be in a way detrimental to the business. “When there were two businesses, there was a competition that existed between the two divisions to sell which was healthy for channel partners. Now with the integration, it would again become a situation which would be beneficial for the vendor but not for the channel,” Gupta said.

On the other hand, PN Prasad, President, Confed-ITA said that the integration would reduce the number of conflicts between the channels and the sales team of Microsoft. “There used to be lots of conflicts between the two divisions of Microsoft and the channels team, and their sales strategies have always been unclear. However, after this integration there will be one point of contact in Microsoft, which should reduce the conflicts to a greater extent,” said Prasad.

The opinion from Microsoft on the integration process was awaited at the time of filing the report.

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