Microsoft: 25 Years at the Heart of a Developing, Growing Community

Bence Orbán

BBJ: What are the business targets for Microsoft Hungary for 2019?

Bence Orbán: Microsoft Hungary is the engine of a developing, constantly growing community that consists of partners, suppliers, students, teachers and clients. During the 25 years Microsoft has been in Hungary, it has become a leader in digital rejuvenation. Our aim is to develop the digital world with consistent innovation. Microsoft isn’t just a leading technological and efficiency provider worldwide, but also has the safest infrastructure in the world. Microsoft spends over USD 1 billion on security-related R&D. Our data centers, and our quantum computers that are under development, meet the strict data protection regulations of the United States and the European Union; that assures people in the economy and public service can trust Microsoft with their data.

We are a unique cloud service provider, giving our customers the infrastructure and platform to develop their own applications, while also providing a unique set of Software as a Service solutions. We would like to have every single SME, corporate and enterprise customer use our unique “Modern Workplace” platform, which provides an all-in, end-to-end package of solutions, consisting of well-known productivity and content creation software, enterprise grade e-mail service, secure document management, enterprise social network, task and project management and, last but not least, a brand new collaboration platform, which integrates all the services into one single interface.

BBJ: What are your leading products sold in Hungary?

BO: Of course, Microsoft’s best-known products are the Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office business productivity software. However, we’re making a huge shift from license selling to providing cloud-based services to our consumer and commercial customers. Therefore we also see a shift in the demand towards our “Modern Workplace” solutions, instead of just looking for and buying the current Windows or Office products.

Our leading solution is Office 365, in both consumer and commercial versions; however, we’re seeing growing demand, especially in the corporate and enterprise segments, for our newest platform solution, Microsoft 365. Our “Modern Workplace” solution integrates Windows, as an operating system with Office 365, and also adds an intelligent and enterprise grade security solution, Enterprise Mobility and Security. Microsoft 365 is also available for SMEs, where demand is also building; however due to market maturity, we expect that the demand in this space for will definitely be higher in the coming years. One of the most important pillars is teamwork and collaboration, and definitely the new “star” of our platform is Microsoft Teams, a single user interface that integrates every productivity solution from communication, online conferencing and task management to data visualization, into the same user experience. The demand for this solution is already hot, and the majority of it is coming from the SME space. The reason for that is Microsoft Teams has a colorful, easy to understand user interface, with great smartphone applications (both Android and iOS are supported), therefore it requires minimal user training and adoption.

We do not have specific numbers for Hungary, but we performed well in Q2 as new and existing customers continue to adopt our cloud services. The investments we’ve been making in these products (including greater integration with data, intelligence and machine learning) are driving increased usage.

BBJ: What are the upcoming trends for business software in Hungary?

BO: The Hungarian business market more or less follows international trends, namely cloud and mobility continue to be the biggest drivers for enterprise spend, providing significant opportunity for Microsoft in Hungary, too. We continue to outline the “Modern Workplace”, which is about a new way of work, mobility and employee engagement, including Firstline workers scenarios, where even employees without computer access (e.g. employees in manufacturing or in retail) have the ability to connect with the “outer loop” of the company, so they can access information, do training on the go, and talk to anyone in the company with the help of our powerful collaboration platform. We definitely put more emphasis in the near future on scenarios like mobility, chatbot/AI-assisted conversations, machine learning and security. The unique value of the “Modern Workplace” platform is that it’s independent from regions, countries and cultures, so exactly the same, professional and enterprise grade software and services are available in Hungary as in the United States, for example.

BBJ: Hungary has a good reputation for producing IT engineers. What contributions do they make to Microsoft internationally?

BO: The latest contribution to Microsoft from Hungary is coming from a developer company, 360world, working on HoloLens. Currently they are working on a holographic version of Skype, together with HoloLens product team in Redmond, in the States.