MS plans $25 mn investment to ramp up technical support

Microsoft Corporation plans to invest an additional $25 million to expand its technical support operations from India.

The software major already has invested $25 million at its Global Technology Support Centre in Bangalore since October 2003. The centre currently employs 400 professionals and is part of the global Microsoft Customer Service and Support.

Speaking to Business Standard, Lori Moore, VP, product support services, Microsoft said: "We are highly satisfied about how things have developed in the Indian support centre and it is on a par with our global support centres. We have so far invested close to $25 million and as we see it, the Indian operations has the potential for a further $25 million on investment over the next couple of years."

The centre in Bangalore focusses on providing high level technical resolution services to English speaking enterprise customers and partners across the globe.

"Our support ranges from Developer and Enterprise Platform to Enterprise Messaging and Enterprise Business Applications Support," added Manish Sinha, MD (Asia-Pacific), Customer Service & Support, Microsoft.

In addition to these, 400 professionals supporting enterprise customers, Microsoft has outsourced the support service for retail consumers to Wipro and Convergys who have dedicated 400 more agents for Microsoft work. Ms Moore, a 14-year veteran at Microsoft, noted that the Indian centre does proactive support, helping clients on how best to leverage Microsoft enterprise offerings.

"This kind of initiative is gaining a lot of respect for the Indian centre and we are looking at moving more lines of business to India as our business grows globally," she noted.

The Microsoft Centre in India is equipped with a state of the art 'tear and build' lab that Support Engineers utilise to replicate customers' multi-vendor infrastructure environments, thereby offering capabilities to remotely design and test solutions.

This allows Microsoft to test solutions before implementing them at the customer location and provides an opportunity for Support Engineers to work on problems remotely.

Talking about India's booming BPO industry, she said that Microsoft is taking a measured approach and is not madly rushing into India as a few other multinational organisations have done.

"It is important that we do in-depth research on how best we can use the skill-sets present here before we move any kind of operation here," Moore said, adding that discussions are on at Microsoft headquarters whether to leverage India's expertise in back office operations such as accounting and human resources areas.