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| Sunday, 22 February 2004 |
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"Microsoft" to localise IT sector by HIRAN H. SENEWIRATNE Global IT giant, Microsoft Corporation (MC), which started its operations in Sri Lanka will focus on localising its products, services and research as well as development in the country. "MC will initially develop the IT infrastructure to assist the country", said President, Microsoft Asia Pacific, Sanjay Mirchandani. He said that they wanted to support the e-Sri Lanka initiative, which was implemented by the government to project this country as a IT hub in the region. The new subsidiary would work closely with its partners and customers to improve the ICT knowledge of Sri Lankans at grassroots level, he said. He said that Sri Lanka had enormous potential in terms of IT development. With the development of this sector more than 10 million IT related jobs would be created in Asia, which would in turn contribute to a considerable proportion of any country's GDP growth in the region. During Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's recent visit to the USA, an agreement was reached to support Sri Lank's IT development ,he added Mirchandani said that according to a US survey, it was revealed that a 10 per cent growth in the IT sector would tend to increase the GDP by 13 per cent in any country. MC would assist primary and secondary schools in the country to develop IT and supply office packages at an affordable rate. The current political situation was no barrier to them and they were prepared to work with any government that came into power, he said. The company had both short and long term plans to develop the IT system in the country by investing billions of dollars. On a short term basis it would venture into sales, marketing, backup service, e-governance and ICT infrastructure development in the whole country, he added. Outlining their strategies to localise its presence here he said that the company would introduce a separate research and development unit to manufacture a local software and a hardware system beyond English language. |
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