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In Conversation with Sandeep Dhar, Managing Director, Sapient
Microsoft Tech Day is an event of technology & only for technologists! Events like these add new dimensions to Sapient Technology Practice and solidify Sapient delivery capabilities in Microsoft Technology. SDA-India.com sits with Mr. Sandeep Dhar, Managing Director, Sapient, to know more about MS Tech days and how significant is the relationship between Sapient and Microsoft.
SDA: Mr. Dhar could you introduce yourself and briefly enlighten our readership on your role at Sapient?
Sandeep Dhar: In my role as Managing Director, I lead all operations of Sapient India and am also a part of company’s global leadership team. My focus lies in leading Sapient India in a strategic direction as it grows, and ensuring Sapient’s identity of being a great place to work, by sustaining the values and ethics of the organization.
Prior to joining Sapient, I served as President of the business process outsourcing business for Mphasis, a subsidiary of EDS. I have a background in consulting, sales and financial services and have worked with global firms such as Citibank, IBM and ABN AMRO Bank, in India as well as the Asia-pacific region.
SDA: What is MS tech day all about and what is the prime reason for organizing it?
Sandeep Dhar: Microsoft Tech Day is an event of technology & only for technologists! The primary intention of having such an event was to enable Sapient people to interact & gain mindshare with the Microsoft tech experts on the latest Microsoft technologies. Events like these add new dimensions to Sapient Technology Practice and solidify Sapient delivery capabilities in Microsoft Technology.
SDA: Could you explain to us how your employees are benefited from this Event?
Sandeep Dhar: - Leverage the partnership to provide opportunity to our delivery teams to interact/network & gain mindshare with Microsoft SMEs on the latest technologies.
- Share industry Best Practices on the Microsoft technologies.
- Practical application through Hands on lab on emerging technologies like Silverlight.
- Build technology communities within Sapient
- Enable delivery teams to create more business impact through effective use of technologies.
SDA: How Silverlight technology from MS is beneficial to Sapient’s interactive offering and how do you see this evolving in your business as you decide to adopt it. Do you have any success stories that you can share with us?
Sandeep Dhar: Silverlight like Flash helps in offering rich interactive application over the web. Silverlight is still an emerging technology but offers some interesting features like embedded subsets of .NET 3.5 and DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) which will help in building experiences using whole new set of programming languages like C#,VB.NET, IronPython, IronRuby etc., which hitherto was reserved only for javascript. This will also help in a huge volume of desktop developers developing for web. We have been one of the early adopters of this technology and we have built an application for the MTC (Microsoft Technology Center) in Munich, a "welcome screen" that runs in the lobby of Microsoft Germany's headquarters.
SDA: Could you explain to our readers more about the Sharepoint, Dot 3.5 and BizTalk technologies?
Sandeep Dhar: SharePoint is a web-based collaboration and document management platform from Microsoft. SharePoint Server 2007 supports all intranet, extranet, and Web applications across an enterprise within one integrated platform, instead of relying on separate fragmented systems. SharePoint sites are actually ASP.NET 2.0 applications, which are served using IIS and use a SQL Server database as data storage backend.
The .NET Framework version 3.5 builds upon the .NET Framework version 2.0 and the .NET Framework version 3.0, including service packs for the.NET Framework versions 2.0 and 3.0.The following technologies are introduced with the .NET Framework 3.5: *LINQ. *New compilers for C#, Visual Basic, and C++. *ASP.NET AJAX.
Microsoft BizTalk Server is a business process management (BPM) server. Through the use of "adapters" which are tailored to communicate with different software systems used in a large enterprise, it enables companies to automate and integrate business processes. It provides the following functions: Business Process Automation, Business Process Modeling, Business-to-business Communication, Enterprise Application Integration and Message broker.
SDA: Sapient is Microsoft's Gold Certified Partner. Elaborate on the relationship? What are the advantages of such a relationship, can you cite any particular instance?
Sandeep Dhar: Sapient has continued to maintain the highest partnership standing with MS for many years now- by earning competencies through Microsoft Certified Professionals & winning customer references on its MS projects. This level of credibility earns Sapient direct access to field engagement at the highest levels within Microsoft Consulting Services, and account planning and engagement with their field sales force. As a Gold Certified Partner, Sapient is entitled to a whole gamut of Gold Certified Program Benefits.
The advantages of being a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner are many, for both Sapient and our clients. Because a significant portion of Sapient’s client work is based on the Microsoft platform, both from a custom application development standpoint and from a Microsoft products standpoint, the technical enablement, training, software and support is incredibly valuable to our delivery teams and helps to ensure high quality deliverables to our clients that are based on Microsoft technology.
SDA: How do you see India shaping up in from the Sapient global scenario? Do you see any traction from India for your interactive business? Can you please share details about your India operations and what is the growth plan?
Sandeep Dhar: India today is a significant part of Sapient Globally. Sapient has been present in India since 2000. Over 60 percent of our people globally are based out of India. We currently service both our North American and European clients out of India. Going forward, apart from being an important delivery centre, India will also be a market where we wish to do business in. We will start small this year and will grow from there. We at Sapient do see significant opportunities in the Interactive space with the online spend set to rapidly increase in the coming years. With our differentiated offering and scale in Interactive, we are sure to exploit this opportunity as it unfolds.
