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Microsoft takes on Linux in
India
By Indrajit Basu
KOLKATA - In his third visit to
India, which ended on Thursday and which he called his
most radical yet, Microsoft chief Bill Gates unveiled a
US$400 million investment plan over the next three years
for the country.
According to Gates, this will be
Microsoft's biggest non-manufacturing investment outside
of the United States, and the largest share of this -
$280 million - will be devoted to the development of
skills around the "dot net" platform to increase
business opportunities for Indian companies by
leveraging Microsoft product development.
But for the Microsoft honchos in India, even as that
appears to be the most important mandate as crafted by
their chief, there is a different task in hand. This is
capturing Indian software developers to adopt
Microsoft's operating systems as the platform of choice
for developing software, says Dilip Mistry, Microsoft's
director at the Bangalore office.
But why should
Microsoft be worried about losing share when eight out
of 10 computers used in India run on Microsoft? The much
discussed battle between Microsoft and Linux - the free
operating system - that has been raging all over the
globe has finally spilled over to India.
All around India, the noise of the user benefits of Linux
as an operating system - the underlying layer of
software, like Windows, MSDOS, Unix, etc, on which
everything else runs - is deafening. Here are a few
examples of Linux's increasing popularity in the
country. Starting with the government, the Supreme Court
- India's apex judiciary - has a few pilot projects
under way. So have the High Courts in Karnataka and
Andhra Pradesh states, and the government of West
Bengal. The Central Excise Department has moved 1,000
desktops to Linux. The Delhi Road Transport Office has
implemented a pilot scheme to examine its viability.
C-DAC, the government's supercomputing arm, has moved
lock, stock and barrel to Linux.
Then there is
the National Stock Exchange - among the early adopters
to use Linux to implement a solution unique to stock
exchanges anywhere in the world. Companies such as Asian
Paints and IDBI are cheerleading the free-source
operating system. Others, like Reliance, Texas
Instruments, the Times of India group, Raymond, Bombay
Dyeing, Godrej Infotech, HDFC Bank, Hindustan Dorr
Oliver, Central Railways and Air-India, have deployed
Linux to power at least a part of their back end IT
system.
At India's Ivy league educational
institutions, such as the Indian Institute of
Technology, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
and the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Linux has
achieved official recognition. Many not on the bandwagon
are slowly getting onto it. To get a sense of that,
there are already three virtual user groups - with
clogged web sites- spread across the country, spending
time at educational institutions, companies and
individual users spreading the gospel of Linux. Clearly,
Microsoft needs to control the beast before it gains too
much attention in the country, because as Dilip Mistry
puts it, "This country can affect our [Microsoft's]
destiny."
Although at the current year's revenue
of about $330 million that India generated for Microsoft
- a company that is expected to notch $32 billion of
global revenues by year 2003 - the country's market size
is not too significant. But the importance of India's
market lies somewhere else.
Estimates put the
present number of India's software developers at
anywhere between 450,000 and 600,000. That's about 10
percent of the world's developer population. By
end-2002, India will probably have more developers than
any country in the world. And, this is why it is
important to gain control of this group.
Why
is the mindset of software developers so important for
operating system product companies like Microsoft and
Linux? In short, developers actually build applications
that run on operating systems. And if the developer
community perceives that an operating system is gaining
credence with the end-user community - like you and me -
they shift attention there. Sales of an operating system
software, thus, are a direct function of the extent and
availability of end user software that can run on it.
But for Microsoft, the developer community is
not the only issue. Although the present size of the
Indian market is tiny for Microsoft, it still holds huge
potential. At least theoretically. The country's
shrink-wrapped software market is currently $409
million, in which Microsoft has an 80 percent share -
but this is not its actual size. For every licensed
piece of software Microsoft sells in India, there are
eight pirated copies doing rounds. Which means, in an
ideal world, Microsoft could sell software worth $2.64
billion (8 x $330 million) in India. There is another
factoid here. In 2001, while IT spending was being
slashed across the world, the packaged software market
grew 37 percent in India. Growth rates are expected to
continue at this rate for a few years to come. Clearly,
therefore, the numbers are compelling.
From
another angle; the government picks up two-thirds of the
shrink-wrapped software sold in the country. The rest is
largely accounted for by the private corporate sector.
India, thus, would certainly be a different world for
Microsoft if the government and companies make a
conscious decision to move towards Linux.
Bill Gates, however, refuses to recognize Linux as
a threat in India. Shrugging it off as a serious
competition to Windows, he said during his visit, "There are a
few cases where Linux is used in some parts of India,
China and Malaysia, but it does not have a uniform
acceptance. Moreover, Windows offer much better price
point performance." But he conceded that Linux was
gaining popularity in the country. "There is a shift
somewhat within the Unix space away from Sun and towards
Linux, " he said. "That's partly a reflection of the
fact that the price performance coming out of standard
PC platforms, whether used at the desktop level or the
server level, is just so much better than the
specialized, more expensive systems."
But many
do not see eye-to-eye with Gates. Richard Stallman, for
instance, the founder of the free software movement -
called GNU/Linux - who is challenging the might of
Microsoft, was also in India during those four days that
Gates was, to convince the Indian government to let go of
proprietary software. "I have met people in [Indian
states of] Kerala, here in Karnataka, in Andhra Pradesh,
and some people in the government of India. What they
say sounds favorable," said Stallman, adding, "But what
matters is how they carry it through into action."
Companies in India, though, are certainly
adopting Linux. At a recent Hewlett-Packard seminar on
solutions for the manufacturing industry, attended by
300 chief information officers, almost 60 percent said
that they would be moving to Linux-based systems.
According to Kamal Dutta, HP India's country business
manager, companies are deploying Linux to the extent of
15-20 percent of the total applications.
But
even as Linux is emerging as a challenge in India for
Microsoft, it doesn't mean that the future of Microsoft
in the country is at stake. At least not just yet. That
is because, for all its strengths, Linux has chinks in
its armor. The most fundamental problem, according to
sources, is the fact that there is a lack of unity among
the Linux vendors and developers. Moreover, fighting a
giant like Microsoft in a country where Linux is still
being explored as an operating system is not easy. Then
there is a lack of policy support. Despite the fact that
Linux evangelists have been pushing for increased
acceptance of the software in India, the truth is, until
now, no policy documents have been framed by any state
government, which in turn could pose a hurdle for
Linux's adoption in government departments.
Finally, support and services of Linux in India
are still nascent and have some way to go before they
can catch up with Microsoft. For Microsoft baiters like
Stallman, therefore, beating the world's most popular
operating system could be a long haul.
(©2002
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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