Microsoft bets on BI, EAI accelerators

Shipra Arora / New Delhi

After the recent launch of its Six Sigma accelerator solution two months ago, Microsoft is now focusing on business intelligence (BI) and enterprise application integration (EAI) accelerators. While the BI solution has been launched, the EAIaccelarator is expected to be launched in the Indian market over the next two to three months. This is in line with the company’s strategy of focusing increasingly on solutions, which form a part of its business productivity solutions for organisation strategy. These accelerators are expected to give the company a strong thrust in the mid-tier market.

Tarun Malik

According to Tarun Malik, product manager—Business Tools, Microsoft India, the total products and services revenues impacted by these accelerators is being pegged at around $30 million for BI, $7-8 million for Six Sigma and $5-7 million for EAI over the next one year. The revenue opportunity, which Microsoft is betting on is slated to be almost 50 percent of the total revenues in case of both BI and Six Sigma and one-third in case of EAI. The company will also earn some proportion of services revenues wherever the services of its own consulting outfit, Microsoft Consulting Services, is enlisted.

The accelerators will comprise products and technologies from Microsoft, relevant to a particular solution area like EAI or BI, which will be be bundled together as a boxed solution offering. In the case of business intelligence, the core product will be SQL Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003. In the front-end, there will be a lot of reporting tools from Microsoft or Office System 2003 as a smart client. Customers can also adopt Microsoft’s portal technology. The EAI accelerator, on the other hand, will bundle together product technologies like Biztalk Server, Content Management Server, Commerce Server and Host Integration Server. These are the four products that will mainly go on an EAI solution, assuming that the customer has a database, which is SQL Server 2000, on a Windows Server platform. Even though the company has been offering these products, a proper framework or accelerator had not been available. Now, various products and technologies will be bundled together into a box for faster and easier deployment.

The verticals that Microsoft will be focussing on for its BI and EAI accelerators are telecom, financial services and insurance. The accelerators for Six Sigma on the other hand are targeted at manufacturing, IT services, healthcare and the financial services segment.

The company will be offering these solutions through its enterprise partners. Though Microsoft India will be engaging with all enterprise partners it will be investing heavily in a few of them because of their interest and domain expertise. For instance, in EAI Microsoft is heavily engaged with HP and TCS. Similarly, it will also be involved with TCS, HP and CGE&Y for BI, and with CMC, HCL Technologies and TCS for the Six Sigma accelerator. The partners will provide consulting, implementation and customisation services.

However, in case the customer demands that only Microsoft should be involved, these services will be provided by Microsoft Consulting Services. But Malik adds that the focus will be on partners to provide these services. "We do not have the bandwidth and our consulting services business is very small. We are an organisation that develops newer technologies and products and so if we get into services our focus shifts. We believe in leveraging our partners and developing more and more partner skills."

Microsoft has also initiated a high-level skilling and training programme for its partners in EAI, BI and Six Sigma.