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“I would like to think of us within the company as advocates of our customers”
Moorthy Uppaluri,
CEO,
Microsoft IT-Global
Software maker Microsoft is well known for the products and services that it delivers to both individuals and corporate users. How does a company the size of Microsoft manage its IT infrastructure? The man responsible, Moorthy Uppaluri, CEO, Microsoft IT-Global, spoke to Jamsheed Gandhi on how, out of the company’s Hyderabad campus, he and his team ensure that over 80,000 employees have their computers up and running every time they come to work. This is the largest operation of Microsoft IT, second only to Redmond.
When was Microsoft IT India created? What has been the mandate?
Microsoft IT India is almost five years old, and I would like to think of us within the company as advocates of our customers. Initially, we functionally used to test and support products, and now we have grown from that to include product management and development. We have over a 1000 people now, which has increased from 250 just three years ago. Microsoft has over 80,000 employees globally, and it’s our job to see to it that the infrastructure that they need to perform is available to them every time they come into work. This includes ensuring that their e-mail functions, their required business applications are accessible we even ensure that their voice communication infrastructure is up and running always.
You are responsible for “dogfooding” your own products, share a bit about how it works?
We believe that it is essential for any business in order to remain competitive, to be able to manage and optimize information with their employees. For every new version of software that is released, we first use it internally to guarantee that Line of Business is not affected. For both Office 2007 and Vista, a large percentage of such compatibility testing has been done out of India. You can say that our department is Microsoft’s first customer. As a rule, products will not ship until there is a sign off from Microsoft IT. This activity allows for us, as a company, to internally understand the product’s capabilities and challenges so that any enhancement or modification can be done on time. Hence, it is first deployed internally within the organization, before it is shipped for production.
Traditionally, the IT function is treated as a cost function. How different is your department?
We are treated pretty much on the same lines. It’s due to globalization that we can sit in India and manage our computing and telecommunication infrastructure across the world. From the company’s view point, we are trying to do more with less. We see a big thrust on using various Web 2.0 technologies in the integration of the Internet into our daily lives. Computing has become more pervasive and one such example is social networking.
I’m sure it will be easy to get people to sign-up to work for you, but how do you go about recruiting the right talent?
We actively like to recruit talent right at the college or University level. We have initiated a College Hiring Program, where we visit colleges such as, NIT Rourkela, BITS Goa, NIT Durgapur and NIT Warangal, for recruitment. We have over 120 colleges signed up for this program. We also have a mix between our own staff and those we hire for a specific project or task.
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