Microsoft and the National Association for Software and Service Companies have partnered with the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore to launch a business management program aimed at Indian software vendors.

The programme seeks to develop business skills that vendors would need to compete in the global software products space.

A specialised course titled the 'software business management course' has been created by the Enterprise Development and Research Institute, an organisation of the Southern Cross University, Australia.

"As Indian software vendors prepare to take on global software products arena more aggressively they need to upgrade technical knowledge and business skills to market them. Indian companies have the technical know-how but they lag behind in sound business management," says Rajiv Kaul, managing director, Microsoft.

For the program roll-out, Microsoft will provide inputs to EDRI on key best business practices for the software vendor community based on an analysis of the environments in which these vendors operate.

The programme has been developed by Microsoft in partnership with Southern Cross University, Australia, Mankau University in China, Management Development Institute in China and the IIM-B.

Globally, the IT services market is estimated to be $330 billion, while the software products market is $180 billion. India has a share of 1.5 per cent in the former and about 0.2 per cent in the latter, which is the products business.

The IIM-B, in India, will be the academic delivery partner. It will validate the course content, undertake local delivery of the program, provide feedback of market idiosyncrasies and emerging trends to refine the content for India.

The programme will consist of modules and software professionals can opt for courses that last about two-three days.

IIM-B already has a three-year part time postgraduate course in software enterprise management. The course currently in its third batch has 110 students.

The new business management programme being launched would be different from IIM-B's existing offerings because it would be a short term programme aimed at value addition only.

The programme could cost anything between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000.

It has modules that will cover topics such as environment and its analysis, value chain, value creation, loyalty and business planning, developing and implementing strategy, product development strategies, following channels to market and leadership. The course will also draw upon the experiences of software vendors operating across markets, a database of relevant benchmarks, business cases and software industry management topics.