Hyd centre has enhanced Microsoft's might

Microsoft's Global Delivery Centre India (GDCI) has made a substantial contribution to products like Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office System.

GDCI is a seamless extension of Microsoft's IT team in Redmond and develops mission-critical applications that support Microsoft's businesses worldwide.

The software major's IT team in Hyderabad has completed four years of operations and now comprises 50 per cent of the company's global IT workforce. GDCI has been growing at a rate of 10 per cent annually and according to Moorthy K Uppaluri, general manager of GDCI, the growth rate is expected to enhance in the coming years.

Neil Leslie, vice-president, Microsoft IT, said that GDCI in tandem with the IT team in Redmond, has contributed significantly towards ensuring the quality of Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office System.

Windows Vista is the next version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, the general availability of which is expected by early 2007. Office 2007's availability to businesses is expected by the end of 2006.

The GDCI has been involved in testing the products before its availability to the general businesses.

"A large percentage of the compatibility testing for both Office 2007 and Vista has been done at GDCI," Uppaluri said.

When a new version of a software is to be released, Microsoft needs to guarantee that the line of business of its clients, who would have been using the earlier versions, is not affected. This essentially means compatibility testing.

Besides, the GDCI is also involved in dogfooding Vista and Office 2007, which typically means using those products internally. This is done to understand the product's capabilities and challenges so that any enhancement or modification can be done on time.

Dogfooding is also a method adopted by the company to let its customers know that it is confident of its products and is therefore deploying it internally.

GDCI has centres of excellence in administration IT, business intelligence, enterprise solutions, customer relationship management (CRM), regional business, operations and services. "Business intelligence and CRM are the new focus areas of growth," Uppaluri said.