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)
