PwC: As a global provider, do you see a change in the markets where customer growth and potential partners reside?

Gupta: We don´t see a distinctive trend that customers are coming only from emerging markets and not from developed markets. Even now, customers are emerging from established markets as much as it is from developing markets. But for the case of partners, we see it clearly emerging from developed markets and not from developing markets for a while.

PwC: What benefit can software providers get from the use of social technologies?

Gupta: We see the emergence of social media as a way for doing marketing, branding, and getting customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction pulse.

PwC: What do you expect the business implications to be as more providers use the cloud as a service channel to their customers?

Gupta: A key challenge in moving to the cloud is how providers manage to migrate their existing software licensing models (where they have got their large base with annuity revenues of software licenses) to a pay-per-use model, as it would bring out revenue unpredictability and revenue cannibalization that could be a risk for the software companies.