Microsoft banks on SAM

Shivangi Yadav

Gurgaon

October 9th, 2007

Microsoft is very soon planning to rollout a new initiative to engage a
varied cross section of channel community across the country. The Software Asset
Management (SAM) program is targeted at both mid segment customers and also at
the Enterprise Partner Group (EPG).

Talking about SAM and what it does, Brian J Campbell, Director-Genuine
Software Initiative, Microsoft India said, “As Indian companies go global and
more and more international companies make a beeline for India, what is
surprising is how not many companies are tracking the state of the software that
they are using. Internationally, software asset management is considered a
critical part of the business because the moment any software crashes, you end
up losing not only time and data but also money, and in some cases businesses.
In this age of 24x7, where there is no chance of a downtime, any company that
faces a massive hitch in its working is going to end up making huge losses. So
in that scenario, the management of your software becomes critical. That is what
SAM will do for a company.“

Elaborating further about the benefits of SAM, Campbell added, “Started in
early 90's in US, it is an ISO recognized process that helps you recognize
what you've got, where it's running, where it can best be utilized, what
overlap you may have and what's needed in terms of licensing documentation,
and how can this specifically benefit your business? SAM has already been
implemented across US and Europe and dramatic ground has been gained. It
basically makes you realize the value that is attached to IPR and as India does
more and more global business, good governance will become critical, making SAM
essential.“

Discussing how channel partners can benefit from this new initiative,
Campbell said, ''SAM is targeted at mid and upper-mid market, apart from the
enterprises. While the big enterprises might be a different ball game, for the
mid and upper-mid market we will rely on the channel partner community. How SAM
is beneficial for them is that it is not a one-time exercise but a yearly
recurring service. A pull through activity, it will help channel partners build
continuous engagement with their customers.“

The company is planning big things to build up SAM in India. “The first
thing will be to build up a channel base to support SAM in India. We are in fact
looking at engaging quite a few national level players for this activity apart
from players in the regions. That apart we have to build up point of sales, and
for the same we are planning to launch an integrated communication program
starting this month to educate people about how SAM is beneficial for their
business.”

When questioned about the money that the company has planned for market spend
to drive this new initiative Campbell averred, “It is difficult to give out
figures but from the total budget the largest percentage of money goes for our
communication activities in engaging partners and end-customers alike.”

Dithering on putting a specific date for rollout of this new program,
Campbell said, ”At the moment we are building the activity internally, hiring
and training people who can then go out and evangelize about SAM. We have some
experts coming in from UK in October, and thus we should be out with out first
case studies for the EPG segment in November or December this year.”