Hyderabad: Over 500 million new apps likely in next 5 years: MS COO

Hyderabad: With the Covid-19 pandemic leading to digital transformation at a speed never seen before, over 500 million new applications are likely to be built globally over the next five years, Rajiv Sodhi, Chief Operating Officer, Microsoft India, said on Wednesday quoting Gartner. With every business organisation turning into technology entity amid the current pandemic, the world is expected to see the development of more and more applications. A majority of the apps are expected to be developed on a low-code platform, said Sodhi. A large number of new business applications are likely to be developed by companies in-house as they adapt to new technologies.

Sodhi revealed this while announcing the availability of Microsoft's Dynamics 365 Project Operations solution across India during a virtual roundtable on 'Decoding Microsoft business applications'. It has been developed to help service-based businesses in unifying operational workflows to provide visibility, collaboration, and insights to drive success across teams, from prospects to payments to profit.

"While technology has been driving the world across industries for a number of years, COVID has accelerated this shift. What was happening in years is now happening in months," he said. He believes that digital transformation of two years has happened in just two month as the companies are adapting to new technologies to stay connected and run business

"Every company is becoming technology company to advance what it wants to achieve like optimisation, empowering people in the organisation, engaging customers and transforming products. The output of one system is being used as input for another system," he said.

He said during the Covid-19 pandemic, several organisations used the Azure cloud platform as they started working remotely. Even the governments are using Cloud capabilities to run various apps. The government of Punjab, for instance, developed a Corona Virus Alert (COVA) Chat bot to provide information to people about Covid. He explained how Royal Enfield and LTI, a subsidiary of L&T, were using Microsoft solutions to manage all systems in their business operations in an integrated way.

"Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations will help organizations in winning new deals, tracking and managing projects throughout their lifecycle, retaining best people, and increasing profit margins. We believe that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations will truly enable businesses to reimagine project management by bringing together cross-functional teams to deliver differentiated customer experience," said Sodhi.

Built on the Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365 Project Operations brings together capabilities from Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation, Dynamics 365 Finance, and Microsoft Project. It integrates with an organization's current enterprise systems helping drive business growth across their sales and delivery processes, without the need to rip and replace existing systems.

Businesses can also easily scale Project Operations using Microsoft Power Platform and other Dynamics 365 applications, like Dynamics 365 Marketing, Dynamics 365 Human Resources, and Dynamics 365 Customer Service. It can easily adapt to changing market conditions by connecting with other Microsoft apps and services, including Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Microsoft 365.