'Data centres are the factories of today'

Anant Maheshwari, President of Microsoft India, holds forth on data centres, digital transformation and cyber threats

- Sourav Majumdar and Nidhi Singal

Microsoft entered India in 1990, and since then it has played an important role in boosting the country's economic growth. As Microsoft India-part of the Redmond, Washington-headquartered Microsoft Corp. that had a market capitalization of $2 trillion as of July 7-continues investing in India, there is a huge chance that the country will become a big play globally for the tech giant from a business point of view, says President Anant Maheshwari. In a freewheeling interaction with Business Today's Sourav Majumdar and Nidhi Singal, Maheshwari, 49, talks about the adoption of digital transformation by India Inc., the threat landscape, and the way forward. Edited excerpts:

Q: It is the end of the year for Microsoft (the tech giant follows a July-June fiscal year). How has the last year been and what will be the broad agenda going forward?

A: I'll start with where we are for Microsoft globally; we've been on this transformation journey for the past eight years, ever since Satya [Nadella] took charge of the company [as CEO]. It started with the mission of empowering every person, every organization on the planet to achieve more, and pretty much in the same way, we've been going at it in India. I've been part of the company: for nearly six years now. I've seen this first-hand... how we operate to transform and deliver that vision on a daily basis to our customers and partners in the country.