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How Microsoft Azure lost the first mover Advantage in the India Market.

In 2010 Microsoft launched Azure in India and I was lucky to get standing place in the Taj Lands End, Mumbai at the launch. The hall was packed and overflowing and it was more like a rock concert than an IT event there were more then 500 people at the Azure launch.
About a year later Microsoft India is still getting their act right, I wonder what went wrong it was surely not the marketing team because Microsoft India always had a wonderful sales team.
This is my perspective on how Microsoft Azure lost the first mover advantage in the India Market.
For one Microsoft did not offer the service in Indian Rupees, so it was difficult for someone to pay in US
Dollars for services in India.
Two Microsoft India did give free Azure to students/technology adopters, but they needed to log in their international credit card details so that they could be billed if they exceeded the allotted quota. Most Indians  do not possess international credit cards in India so it was a non starter.
Three Microsoft India did not advertise or publicize their cloud offerings adequately, though Mr. Steve Ballmer had identified Indian as the biggest market for cloud computing.
Fourth Microsoft India had no scheme where existing users could surrender their Microsoft licences and get some credit for moving into Azure, rather they had one sales team selling licences and another selling Azure.
So the Azure team had a challenge in selling to accounts where the licence selling sales team already had a strong relationship with the client.
Lastly Microsoft allowed many Indian data hosting operators to host Microsoft services and they started selling them as cloud service, which in most cases did not confirm to the NIST definition of the Cloud.
Recently I figured that the whole team had been revamped and Microsoft India is making a second attempt to bring Azure services to India, I wish this team all the best.
Maybe this time around they will finally connect to Indian business and make them move their applications to Azure.
I would love to hear from the readers of this blog what else Microsoft India could have done better to make Azure a success in India.

Comments

  1. Unknown1:06 PM

    Subbu, very well said. I agree to your thought.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cloud Hosting India2:40 AM

    Awesome... I really love the way you write your article here... And also it shows facts which I like. Thanks for sharing this.

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