{"id":5505,"date":"2012-03-11T07:01:55","date_gmt":"2012-03-11T07:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=5505"},"modified":"2012-03-11T07:04:13","modified_gmt":"2012-03-11T07:04:13","slug":"microsoft-sa-bullish-on-cloud-and-virtualisation-offerings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/software\/5505\/microsoft-sa-bullish-on-cloud-and-virtualisation-offerings\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft SA bullish on cloud and virtualisation offerings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Office 365, and the alliance with Nokia in the phone space, are big bets for Microsoft this year. This is word from Melanie Botha<\/a>, the marketing and operations lead at Microsoft <\/a>South Africa.<\/p>\n

Microsoft is facing increased competition in South Africa from competitors like Google<\/a> and Apple<\/a> – and coupled with the continued economic downturn, the company is seeing a lot of caution in purchasing new Microsoft products.<\/p>\n

Despite this caution, many companies are forking out money for mission-critical technologies.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs part of a globally-listed company, we don\u2019t disclose our figures per region. But what I can tell you is that, while buyers of technology are more cautious than in previous years, they\u2019re investing heavily in mission-critical technologies that deliver real value to the business,\u201d says Botha.<\/p>\n

\u201cAreas where we\u2019ve seen significant uptake were especially in public sector, advertising and online. Our CRM and ERP Business have also grown, as well as unified communications.\u201d<\/p>\n

Botha added that Microsoft has always been strong in the products that keep businesses ticking – like server and infrastructure solutions and productivity suites. \u201cWhere we\u2019re seeing a lot of interest right now is in areas like unified communication solutions, virtualisation and solutions that underpin a private cloud infrastructure,\u201d said Botha.<\/p>\n

Botha continued, saying that, while the market conditions are still tough, Microsoft SA is cautiously optimistic that its strong cloud and virtualisation offerings will help it to stay ahead of the curve.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re focused heavily on business and realise that, at the tail end of an economic downturn, companies need to be smart in how they spend money, and what they get for it. Big bets for the year include Office 365, which can transform the way companies buy and use productivity software – and our alliance with Nokia in the phone space, where we feel we have a powerful business story to tell,\u201d said Botha.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother big bet for Microsoft is in the SMB community; and we\u2019re in the process of developing several targeted and customised solutions in partnership with several key industry players. The Microsoft\/SMB landscape is one we are keeping a firm eye on, and we are excited to see our efforts in serving this community flourish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOtherwise, our focus remains on solutions that reduce travel and communication costs; increase collaboration; reduce energy consumption; optimise computers; and make it easier to purchase technology,\u201d Botha concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsoft\u2019s Melanie Botha says that the company is investing heavily in mission-critical technologies that deliver real value to businesses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[51,53,26,1342,169,187,1341],"class_list":["post-5505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-apple","tag-google","tag-headline","tag-melanie-botha","tag-microsoft","tag-nokia","tag-office-365"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5505"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5507,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5505\/revisions\/5507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}