Bill Gates

Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corporation announced a huge impetus for the company’s Indian operations with the release of Rs 2000 crore in funding. The investment is spread across a period of three years, and will be targeted towards areas like education, partnerships, innovation, localisation and the Indian Development Centre.

Laying out the future roadmap for India, Gates announced the launch of Project Shiksha, focused on delivering access to technology in education. As part of the investment in the India Development Centre, the strength of the development team will increase to 500 by 2005.

“The emergence of India’s IT industry as a global player is a testament of the country’s commitment to technology development and innovation. India is of strategic importance as its developer- and skill-base continues to grow. The Indian developer community is creating next generation .NET applications and India’s rich pool of skilled IT professionals are servicing customers across the world,” said Gates.

As part of Project Shiksha, Microsoft will be partnering with state education departments to set up 10 Microsoft IT academy centres. It also plans to collaborate with over 2,000 partner-driven school labs in the next five years. Aimed at accelerating computer literacy, the project is targeted to cover over 80,000 school teachers and 3.5 million students over the next five years. Project Shiksha will provide end-to-end solutions, including software and training, for teachers and students.

On the other hand, the ‘Partnering with India’ programme will emphasise on developing skill sets and .NET readiness of Microsoft’s partners in India, in addition to working with partners to develop .NET ready solutions and offering them in the global market place. Gates further said that Microsoft would explore joint business opportunities with Indian partners. There
will be opportunities for Indian companies to partner with Microsoft’s Product Development Groups, Product Support & Services (PSS) Group, Premier Services (PS) Group and Business Unit IT groups. “As we enter the digital decade, the opportunities before us to drive innovation are immense. This presents a unique role for the Government of India to create a vibrant knowledge-based economy that encourages innovation and is built on deep partnerships with local software organisations, developers and companies like Microsoft,” said Gates.

As part of its localisation efforts, Microsoft’s products on the desktop, including Windows XP and Office, will be made available in local languages. Initiating this move, the company has announced Hindi language versions of Windows XP and Office 11, which is the code name for the next version of Office.

Furthermore, Windows XP language support will be extended to include Bengali and Malayalam, taking the total number of Indian languages being supported by Windows XP to 11. This will help bridge the Digital Divide as it will allow independent software vendors to build applications in local languages.