Monday, May 4, 2009

MSR- The Ray of Hope in Microsoft India

Jan 2005 , when the new year 2005 started there was a new success chapter called 'MSR India' also got opened in this emerging market in Microsoft's book of record.
What a 65 people organization can do ? Microsoft Research India is the answer !
This is one best example people should learn that empire building is not going to take us and the company anywhere, though it may give goosebumps immediately it'll ditch in the near short term. ( Ex: MoorthyU tripled MS IT India headcount in a year and went in thin air in the same year). Fact: Only the deliveries speak for themselves and take us long way.
Most of the employees in India have highest regards for MSR Managing Director Dr. P Anandan and Assistant Managing Director Kentaro Toyama , they should walk across Microsoft offices at Mumbai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Bangalore teaching rest of the business leaders, employees how a organization can be still run and mean in the same time.

This interview video of MSR India and Videos of the employees talk about their groups, work, and projects are must watch to get an idea what's happening with Microsoft Research.

TechXChange is the only real 'original' technical event happen in India which is nothing but the brain child of MSR, though it happens along with the collaboration of MS IDC and some other events like TechVista .

They're the only one organization in India who still connect with common people by The MSR India blog .Most of the other organizations in India do not even know what is the benefit of connecting to the common man.

Did any other organization in India can talk about the word transparency and have any guts to do that ? Like publishing Microsoft's Research spending on Display- Microsoft Reasserts its India Focus

Across globe, MSR stays ahead of the curve. Proof: MSR TechFest held recently, where the common man got an opportunity to see cool prototypes like WorldWide Telescope and Microsoft Songsmith.

Only problem with research is, it will take lot of time to monetize on the research work they are executing. But we hope the SLT is aware of that already and continue making right investments in MSR across globes.

Request to Rick Rashid & Craig Mundie: For God sake, please do not go on recruiting spree opening up research centers across every damn cities in India where our Indian political muscles are fluxing with us a lot to open a shop. If we do that it'll become one another division like MS IDC, SMSG & MS IT. --or --Who knows when we ramp up too much of the research pool here in India too spreading across too many cities without many goals, it may become 'one another entity' like Microsoft Research Cambridge (1997), Microsoft Research Silicon Valley(2001) and Microsoft Research New England (2008) . Though we claim that we went and set up shops across rest of the US to tap the talent pool available there and abundant research academia, etc rest of the Microsoft is not believing that story. They believe it is just to accommodate the senior research talent whom we've in Redmond to help retain them for long term and relocate to their home states lying across the streets of those research centers. This kind of knee jerk actions to cater to the big boys will fluctuate from our original intended goals.

Time for some requests(success tips) to make this small success story as big.
  1. Do not ramp up the headcount unless otherwise essential, stay flat. You're right there on the 'fitness curve', if you go little above you're going to get fat and unhealthy. Then we may recommend you also for a 'lean & mean' exercise.

  2. Do more cool research targeting end customer and connect with customer often. IDC, IT and SMSG do not have time for the customers now and all of them lost their customer vision long back while building their empires.

  3. Do not go and set up shop anywhere else in India, whatever compelling reason it may be.

  4. Continue the academia collaboration.

  5. Invest more on the research internships, post doc researcher recruitments.

way to go, Continue all your good work Microsoft Research India.

You are the only ray of hope India has so that we can prove the talent behind this too old( ~2000 years) cultured country to the new vibrant, young (~200 years) cultured country's company Bosses to ramp up their businesses here in India in an efficient and planned way.

5 comments:

  1. I have worked with Anandan, you're cent percent right. Great man of values.

    Well written detailed article about MSR & it's presence in India, I believe you're going one step above mini-msft exploring the business in depth.
    Good work,Keep it up !
    This is possible only because you're talking about a small region with limited business.

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  2. MSR India has a lot of overlevelled goats.

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  3. no of stocks sold recently
    cliddell-20k
    frank bord-7k
    billg-20 lakhs shares

    anyone smelling rat ?

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  4. Though we claim that we went and set up shops across rest of the US to tap the talent pool available there and abundant research academia, etc rest of the Microsoft is not believing that story. They believe it is just to accommodate the senior research talent whom we've in Redmond to help retain them for long term and relocate to their home states lying across the streets of those research centers.You do realize that someone could say exactly the same thing about MSR India? In any case, I'm confident this factor plays only a small role: it's actually rather difficult to transfer between MSR labs. I know a small number of people who have done so, and a larger number who have asked and been told no. The vast majority of people at each lab were hired there.

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  5. Not sure about MSR, only thing I'm aware about them they dont talk head to head. Come to ground buddies.

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