Software giant Microsoft is not complacent about the challenges ahead, says Ali Faramawy, Microsoft EMEA VP.
Faramawy told the Microsoft partner conference at Sun City last week that taking care of its people and products, and further improving its partner relationships are top of the company`s agenda.
He noted that the company does not plan to grow its headcount in the region at the same pace as it has over the past couple of years.
He said specific challenges to be addressed include its install base, previous mistakes, platform credibility and the open source issue.
"In some cases, we have in the past been happy with selling licences and did not monitor the software`s use or applications. In some cases we only thought about selling to the partner as opposed to selling with the partner."
He also admitted that while the company has managed to overcome its scalability and performance issues on the Windows platform, it was not so successful on the security side last year.
Regarding the open source issue, he said Microsoft has been fighting an emotional battle with logic. Most people have been motivated to go the open source/standards route due to the image of freedom and openness, resulting in them overlooking other factors such as total cost of ownership, support and maintenance costs.
"It was great to see at a recent Gartner expo that some of the myths like 'why pay for software` have began to fade away," noted Faramawy.
However, government and small businesses still insist on considering the open source route, he said.
"Basically, as a company, we have to focus on integrated innovation as a way of giving customers unmatched value and we have to develop our relationship with them that will see us helping them to maximise the value that our solutions offer."
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