“We had a very healthy quarter, and this is good for us as it showed that we have continued growing our business and doubling the digits. And so we aim to grow more and look forward into doing much better in Q2,” said Microsoft Southern Philippines’ Sales Operation Director Magtanggol “Boy” Bawal.
And to express gratitude to their resellers for bringing in the numbers for the first quarter of their calendar year, Microsoft recently held an appreciation party to award their partners from all over Visayas and Mindanao areas who have shown exemplary efforts in helping Microsoft penetrate the Southern Philippine market.
Thinking Tools and Ng Khai Development Corporation were among the mostly awarded resellers. Ng Khai received incentives for garnering the biggest deal in the first quarter amounting to about $120, 000.
In an exclusive interview, Bawal pointed out that Microsoft also has direction towards catering to the SMB market, which most IT companies are targeting to tap nowadays.
“We have always been there for the SMB market since the very business of Microsoft is structured towards that market segment. We are everywhere as long as people are using PCs,” said Bawal.
Bawal added that even their resellers are part of the small and medium scale market that they are serving and added that all Microsoft’s effort to support these sectors is their contribution to the community.
As a matter of fact he pointed out that when Microsoft grows, it also marks a growth in the community for as partners, every dollar sold by the company in the country is also given back to the community.
Bawal also discussed that Cebu has become a very important market for Microsoft’s Southern Philippines operation. “Cebu is our biggest market as more than half of the business is in Cebu as it is growing very fast especially with BPOs,” said Bawal.
However he also added that other neighboring key cities like Bacolod, Cagayan de Oro and Davao is also fast catching up as they have already started strengthening their IT and ICT operations.
Microsoft like most IT companies has a different calendar year as they start the first quarter in July then ends it in September and their mid-year is December.
Microsoft opted to make their presence stronger in the Southern part of the country because of the fact that the economy is growing as peso continues to appreciate and the growing presence of multinational companies in the region.
Bawal attested that the South has become a major business location in the country since more and more multinational companies are coming over to operate in the area seeing a potential growth in their businesses.
He said that this could be due to the “wealth of resources, manpower, infrastructure, cheaper cost of living and the healthy environment” in the South Philippines that lures most businessmen to even stay for good.
Next year, Microsoft will be launching their newest edition of Windows sequel server in the month of February or early March. As of the moment, their latest windows operating product, Windows Vista, has reportedly been doing quite well in the market since it came out.
But as for their next quarter, Bawal stressed optimism saying that, “the 40% growth in the first quarter is not easy for Microsoft and we are glad that with the help of our partners we were able to show the numbers. And for the next quarter, we are very positive that we will establish more growth and look forward into doing much better.”