[luau] News - Microsoft vs Linux in India

Warren Togami warren at togami.com
Mon Nov 11 11:47:00 PST 2002


http://www.businessworldindia.com/c11nov02.jpg
Check out this magazine cover!

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/11/185237&mode=thread&tid=109
/"An Indian Business magazine, Business World 
<http://www.businessworldindia.com/> is reporting that in it's war 
against Linux, Microsoft is taking the battle to the Indian developers. 
The logic is simple. India has 10% of the developer population of the 
world. If a significant number of these developers commit to work on MS 
platforms then the number of developers working on Linux platforms can 
decrease significantly and thus the number of applications. /As Dilip 
Mistry, a director at Microsoft India's Bangalore office puts it, "This 
country can affect our (Microsoft's) destiny." /[Quote From article] 
Local linux user groups are trying to counter this threat by targetting 
school and university students and increasing the awareness about 
development on a linux platform.
/
http://www.businessworldindia.com/cover.htm
While there are no published numbers, back of the envelope calculations 
indicate Microsoft's Indian arm currently generates sales in the region 
of Rs 1,600 crore. That's a little over $330 million. This ties in 
neatly with the fact that last year, India purchased packaged software 
worth $409 million - of which 80% were Microsoft products. But, 
honestly, for a juggernaut sitting on $40 billion in accumulated cash 
and a projected turnover of $32 billion in fiscal 2003, $409 million is 
loose change. So what "destiny" is Mistry talking about?
     The fast-talking British citizen of Indian origin has been in the 
country for barely 10 months now. He heads a team of 17 evangelists, 
keeps obscenely long hours, lives out of his suitcase and has an awfully 
tough mandate from Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond - do whatever it 
takes to keep Indian developers and programmers working on  Microsoft 
platforms.
Unlike any other director heading operations in the country, Mistry has 
no revenue targets to meet. "The Indian systems integrator, as he moves 
up the value chain, will finally make a decision on what platform to 
settle on. We have to capture them before they make that decision. Which 
is why, my team is very important for Microsoft Corporation, not just 
for India alone."
Intrigued? Don't be. Estimates put the present size of India's developer 
population at anywhere between 450,000 and 600,000. That's about 10% of 
the world's developer population. By end-2002, India will probably have 
more developers than any country in the world. This is why it is 
important to gain control of this population.
     "We are paranoid someone is going to come along and take away 
mindshare from developers. We're paranoid something out there is going 
to be more exciting to developers." Quite clearly, Mistry is talking of 
the threat Linux poses to Microsoft. Probe him. He'll hark back to 
January, when he took up his Indian assignment. Among the first things 
he did was to put two people from his team on Linux forums. They were 
asked to figure out: what is it that excites the Linux community? Is it 
plain Microsoft baiting? Is it Bill Gates bashing? Is it a desire to 
change the world? For Mistry, answers to those questions hold solutions 
on how to choke the Linux community in India. By doing that, the open 
source world loses access to one of the largest developer bases. 
Deprived of that base, the movement suffers and Microsoft gains a major 
victory. "This is primarily a battle for the hearts and minds," says Mistry.
(continued in article)




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