Microsoft Vietnam’s general manager, Christophe Desriac, talks to VIR’s Tuan Anh about IT’s special role in this critical period.

Microsoft Vietnam’s general manager, Christophe Desriac

What are the opportunities for the IT industry?

Companies are looking for ways to cut costs and reduce risks as they confront issues like tighter credit, reduced business activity and slower consumer spending. But with challenges come opportunities. Business leaders who maintain a long-term perspective even as they take short term steps to adjust to the current economic realities have the chance to sharpen their organisation’s focus on the right priorities and ensure that they have the right resources working to achieve the right business objectives.

These resources include both people and technology. This is the time when thoughtful businesses leaders must carefully assess how to best utilise their resources to weather the uncertainty that lies ahead. A new generation of technology innovations is enabling forward-looking businesses to build information systems that are more flexible, more cost effective and that enable people to understand and respond to changing business conditions with greater insight and speed than ever before.

More specifically, how can IT help businesses during this critical period?

I would like to give you some examples. First, virtualisation is a technology that makes it possible to run more than one operating systems on a single computer, thus reducing costs and energy consumption by enabling organisations to use more of the computing power that they already own. Second, unified communications technologies bring voice communications, e-mail, and instant messaging together to allow organisations to replace traditional phone systems with integrated software solutions that reduce hardware and maintenance costs.

Third, optimising on travel is an obvious way that companies can save money. Today, video conferencing and new collaboration tools are making virtual meetings much more like face-to-face interaction and enabling people to share and collaborate more effectively. In addition, companies are finding that reducing computer energy usage is one of the most effective ways to lower costs without hampering organisational capabilities.

At Microsoft, we moved 25 per cent of our servers into a virtualised environment during 2007. The resulting savings top $10 million and today, it takes just four people to manage the group’s 3,500 servers. By implementing a unified messaging system, we are saving $5 million each year through hardware and maintenance costs.

The Vietnamese IT industry has relied more on outsourcing and retailing for foreign IT companies. What should it do to take a more active role to grab new opportunities?

We recommend that the country should move from the mere “made in Vietnam” focus to “designed in Vietnam”, and we strongly believe that the development of the local software industry is a key driver to growth for Vietnam. Our objective is to help Vietnam to develop a local IT industry that is able to create, develop and build software solutions for domestic and international markets.

Besides, we also aim to assist Vietnam to promote e-government services and increase the quality of the IT workforce. To realise and develop the potential of Vietnamese talents, local software companies need to have a strong intellectual property rights protection, which we fully support. Furthermore, we are developing programs to support and collaborate with Vietnamese software enterprises through training, seminars and service support.

How is Microsoft doing in the Vietnamese market?

Despite the economic turmoil, Microsoft Vietnam is expanding both its office space and workforce. We have been hiring more employees, not only in sales and marketing but also in more skillful areas such as technical and consulting. We are bullish about Vietnam’s economy prospects.

I am confident that if we continue to play offence by reaching out and helping our customers and partners during this difficult period, by showing them how to leverage the power of technology and innovation to create new business models, we will build lasting trust as a strategic advisor and create more opportunities.

(Source: VIR)