Monday Nov 25, 2024
Monday Nov 25, 2024
Thursday, 18 December 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Microsoft Asia Pacific President Cesar Cernuda
By Marisa Wikramanayake
Q: It’s your first visit to Sri Lanka in your role as the President of Microsoft Asia Pacific. How has it been so far and how was your meeting with President Rajapaksa?
A: It has been quite social. Yesterday I had a good session, a very good day. I had a meeting with the President, yes, and I was quite impressed with some of the pros that I have seen, some of the numbers and the GDP growth. The numbers I have seen on technology adoption as well and the growth of PCs and tablets in the market and smartphone adoption and internet adoption. And of course the employment rate. And the unemployment rate being less than four per cent. So pretty good indicators for the country.
Q: So what does that mean for Microsoft’s business in Sri Lanka? Why does that make you excited?
A: You see, we are a global company and we are in the NASDAQ and we are a publicly-listed company but we are very committed to the local communities so one of the things I think we are committed to at Microsoft is that we are global but we are also local. As a
matter of fact, we are not really very opportunistic, we have been investing in Sri Lanka for many years.
But what is really interesting is our business model. Which is we work through partners and just in Sri Lanka we have 220 local partners working with Microsoft every day. So for every dollar there’s approximately 12 to 15 dollars that they make. So in other words, there are 6,000 people in Sri Lanka.
Q: Why is education important to Microsoft?
A: There is no doubt that education is a key pillar of our society. But let me tell you more. Forget Microsoft for a second. Think about Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is a country with almost, what, 22 million people in its population? There are four million students approximately? You think about that population – they are going to be, in the next 10, 15, 20 years, the decision makers in the country. 
Education is one of the most important pillars for any government and that is why Microsoft is so keen. There are approximately 10,000 odd schools in Sri Lanka; 6,000 of them are starting to have computers and last year we announced that, with the Government in Sri Lanka, for 1,000 schools, we are providing them with technology and helping them so that we are ensuring that students have the knowledge to know how to use this technology in the future.
One of my goals on this business trip was to go deeper and that was what one of the discussions we had with the President as well – how can we help to make this happen in Sri Lanka? And it’s not just about providing a device or giving a device to the school. It’s content, readiness training, it’s teachers. You know, the 250,000 teachers in Sri Lanka – how can we help them as well so that they understand technology and use technology to help students to do more and achieve more?
Q: Because you have to teach the teachers first before they can teach the students?
A: Absolutely. So that’s pretty much what’s happening in education. Think about the company’s strategy. The company’s rationale and strategy basically is to become the premium platform company to help businesses and customers do more and achieve more, which is a big statement. So how can you really help people to do more and achieve more? And of course this is using the technology and in a way that that can happen.
Q: So what about mobile and cloud computing? Is that going to be part of how you do all this?
A: Actually that’s how we do all this. Think about ourselves right now. We are having this conversation, you have two devices, I have two devices; you have one, you have two – the world has changed and it’s changing into one where everything is mobile. And in everything, things are turning to the cloud. More and more we are seeing that the mobility is a way of living for all of us: how do we engage and how do we communicate? The smartphone is helping us and it’s not the only device that is helping us to be mobile. When you get connected, you want to be connected everywhere.
This part of the world is great. ASEAN as a region actually is a great example of the mobile first, cloud first world where people – there are countries where there are now more SIM cards than there are people, where everybody is using a phone to connect. You see, cities like Jakarta have the largest number of tweets as a city or a country like Philippines which has the greatest selfie penetration in the world or Facebook users per internet users. All of those things I just mentioned are using mobility and cloud services so when we talk about social computing, it’s basically how people interact.
So more and more there’s no differentiation in reality between business and people because at the end of the day businesses are run by people. What you want to make sure of is that this world which all of us are embracing, mobility and the cloud – you want to do it in a way in which you can be more productive. There’s one thing that is for sure which is that the day has 24 hours.
If you want to achieve more and do more you need to be use those twenty four hours. You need to be able, first of all, you need to sleep but those hours in which you are not sleeping, how can you achieve more and do more with this limitation of hours? Technology should be helping you to do this. And cloud computing is a very real element and is really helping you to connect many of these apps.
Q: How will cloud computing affect both big enterprise and small businesses? Why would this be an important step forward for the Sri Lankan business community?
A: Here’s the reality. You need to think about it in the following way. When you look into the business, historically everybody has been looking into IT as an area of investment and so on and there has been a big difference initially between large enterprises and small businesses. Large enterprises have the payroll to go invest in the latest technologies. It’s a big differentiator for them to say I have all this technology that is able to run and do all these things. Small businesses didn’t have the capacity to go and invest at the speed that large enterprises were able to invest.
With cloud computing things change because in reality the large enterprise companies in Sri Lanka will be using the same cloud services as the small business in Sri Lanka because for the first time there is more business because of more access to that technology and technology can be made to be pay per use. So basically with the large companies, they needed to learn that you don’t n
eed as many people so basically Microsoft is running the back end for the large enterprises and the small businesses. And the small businesses that have three employees, they pay for that number of employees at a set amount per month.
It’s a big breakthrough for them. Now for the large enterprises it is a great cost saving. It’s a way also to move and a way to kind of manage in a different way their PNLs (Profit & Loss reporting) so that they can go invest further. They can also always be faster and also have the latest technology and that’s how cloud computing can help so much on the business side.
On the consumer side what is happening is the speed of change and information and the way we access that information is completely different to the way it was several years ago. Let me give you examples. I have a very nice picture of an event that happened back in 2003 and the same thing happened in 2013, ten years later. And you had people bending over, looking and a couple with a camera taking a picture. Ten years later you’re recording and taking a picture and it’s the same place, same event but it’s with a smartphone. 
Today you learn things many times over. You wake up in the morning and you can already see the news online. How newspapers have evolved, how do you share information, how journalists – I follow many journalists. I get information from them before it is published in the newspaper or is printed, you know, because it’s once a day that you are printed.
There is a great speed of change and that basically is making us take faster decisions, adapt faster, be more responsive, and may lead to a better world.
Q: There is a lot of talk about piracy and you mentioned security as a challenge. Does that concern you at all?
A: If the question is ‘are you worried about piracy?’ then the answer is yes. But let me tell you that one of the biggest challenges that people complain about is cyber security and cyber crime. Basically the real vulnerable people/companies are those that are using counterfeit software and products. That’s the best way for malware to penetrate for cyber crime to happen so it’s very important for people to try and understand that having genuine technology overall will protect them from all those issues. So if you are asking me ‘are you concerned about it?’ then yes I will say I am concerned about it. I think that’s an opportunity for them to have a much better service and minimised risks and of course we have cases where people really kind of lose their companies or all these data points and I would have loved them to have done this in the right way and many of them are unaware. So many of my people have to look into what kind of technology do they have and are they really protected.
Q: Do you think it is a case of not realising that risk or is there another kind of barrier that means people gravitate towards counterfeit software rather than the original?
A: In reality, the answer would be that many people would be unaware of that. That’s the truth. Businesses have been built around cyber crime and counterfeit products and that’s something of course that we compete against but that’s why I invite people to think ‘What do I have? And I would love to have the right things here’. Increasing, technology is not something that you need. It’s something that could be a great asset to you, to grow your business, to be more productive, to be disruptive as well, to come into the market with a great idea, with innovations. That’s what worries me – I want to make sure that people have not just the right experience but the best experience.
For Microsoft if you say ‘tell me what is ‘CORE’?’ I would say our customer obsession that people have the right experience. As I told you at the beginning, we are not an opportunistic company, we have more than 40 years of experience managing data for customers, serving people and businesses to realise their full potential. Our real goal is to make sure that people are not just satisfied but that they really like what they do with us.
When you think about our role in a country like Sri Lanka, we are very committed to the local community. We are really committed to make a better country, a better world. That’s a big part of our mission as a company.
Q: Sri Lanka wants to become an ICT hub. Do you think that’s possible?
A: Of course it is possible. There is the great talent that we have seen, we are seeing good developments. I had a meeting today with a company that’s got very good insider knowledge on a specific industry and the financial services working with Microsoft as well so we are looking forward to support the plans for 2020 that we are seeing for the country. There’s definitely good plans for education, there’s the talent, we are seeing the right investments as well. We are looking at the employment rates and the GDP growth. We are strong believers in the future for this country and we are glad that we have been contributing to it and hopefully we will be contributing to it for the future.
Q: So you think that they will reach their goals by 2020, ICT literacy rate and everything?
A: Yes and we will try to help them to get there. It will be – this is a very interesting thing and one of my learnings – life is all about partnership. This is a private-public journey. The media has a big part in it as well. The fact that you are making time to communicate to people – we all need to help the people, to help them create a better country and a better world. So this is not going to be only a government journey or an IT journey, it’s going to be all of us helping us to get more competitive, all of us helping us to be more productive, all of us helping us to have more time off so that we are more productive with the hours that we are doing and we can achieve more. That’s part of what we do every day.
Q: Do you think it requires a shift in mindset with people working in business here to have to convince them to move to the cloud?
A: It’s happening. And it’s going to happen very fast over the next three years. I think we are going to see a faster adoption in the next two or three years.
Pix by Lasantha Kumara
