Microsoft's Customers, Partners in India Are 'Very Progressive': Schuster

Describing India as a "great market", a top Microsoft executive said the company's partners in the country are "very progressive" in the way they service the world and the Indian customers adapt to technology a lot faster than those in some other nations.

"We have a great market in India and (it is) super strong. We have really tremendous partners who have been with us for a long time and are transforming very quickly in the cloud infrastructure," General Manager, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft, Gavriella Schuster told PTI in Orlando on the sidelines of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2015.

She said Microsoft's partners in India also get a lot of business from the rest of the world and "they are probably one of the most progressive channels that we have because of the way that they work and service the rest of the world."

Schuster went on to add that Microsoft's customers in India too are "very progressive and very technology savvy".

"They do not want to seem like they are behind, so in a lot of ways they go cutting edge, a lot faster than a lot of other countries do," she said.

Schuster voiced appreciation for the "personable" and "very relationship oriented" nature of partner-vendor-customer ties.

India-based software products and technology services company Comparex India Pvt Ltd was among the winners of the prestigious Microsoft Country Partner of the Year Award for 2015, a recognition that honours the technology giant's partner achievements across the globe.

Schuster added that Microsoft will continue to invest in a mobile-first, cloud-first strategy and "with the advent of Windows 10, we are turning our attention back to the mobile- first transformation and we are ready to incorporate this element more strongly into the Microsoft Partner program."

Microsoft also announced at the conference plans to expand its Surface channel and will go from having a few hundred partners selling and servicing the Microsoft tablets to a few thousand globally in the coming months.