Microsoft pledges cash for IT in developing world
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Microsoft will spend $235.5 million in schools worldwide over the next five years, part of a plan to triple the number of students and teachers trained in its software programs to up to 270 million by 2013.The money, part of the Partners in Learning program, will go toward training and skills programs in areas with limited IT training and equipment, said Orlando Ayala, vice president of the Unlimited Potential Group, part of Microsoft&#39;s education division, on Tuesday.The announcement is one of several expected to come from the Government Leaders Forum (GLF), an annual conference where Microsoft courts educators and government officials. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates will keynote at the GLF on Wednesday in Berlin.Microsoft&#39;s investment shows how important it views developing markets to its future business. Last year, Microsoft introduced the Student Innovation Suite, which includes the XP Starter Edition plus educational applications, for $3 for qualifying countries.Microsoft faces heated competition from companies supporting the open-source OS Linux and associated software in developing countries. &quot;I think as a company we welcome choice,&quot; Ayala said. &quot;Frankly, we welcome the competition.&quot;The company&#39;s educational funding comes with a hitch: &quot;Of course, that includes the fact they [the schools] use Windows,&quot; Ayala said.That approach contradicts one recommendation contained in a study of software usage in Europe completed in November 2006.Presented to the European Commission, the study concluded that it&#39;s better for students to learn general IT skills rather than just proprietary software.Otherwise, it&#39;s less likely that software from other vendors will be used if people are only trained in programs from one vendor, said Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, of the United Nations University-Merit in Maastricht in the Netherlands. Ghosh is one of the authors of the study.Microsoft&#39;s educational donations look less generous when the company spends &quot;it in order to create a market that&#39;s forced into buying its products,&quot; he said. But Ghosh added it&#39;s hard to argue that struggling schools &quot;should refuse the computers altogether if there&#39;s no money.&quot;Microsoft has recently made significant deals in developing areas. A nongovernmental organization in Russia is buying 1 million units of the Student Innovation Suite over the next five years, Ayala said. The company is also supplying 50,000 units of the same software to Mexico and 150,000 to Libya, he said.While Microsoft is nudging consumers and businesses in developed markets to use its latest Windows Vista operating system, XP will remain the OS the company supports for low-cost laptops such as the Asus Eee and Intel&#39;s Classmate PC, Ayala said.The reason is XP has a smaller footprint than Vista, Ayala said, referring to factors such as how much memory the OS uses and the size of the OS on a PC&#39;s hard drive.Microsoft is still working through some of the &quot;technical limitations&quot; that remain in&#160;putting XP on the XO, the green PC from the One Laptop Per Child project, Ayala said.
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Microsoft has expanded its initiative to provide a low-cost distribution of Windows in Asia. Although the program was originally directed exclusively toward social welfare programs in Thailand and Indonesia, it will now be expanded to Malaysia. The software will be available in all three countries by October.
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Prepares Windows for OLPC Microsoft has challenged an altruistic scheme to get pared-down computers into the laps of African school children by preparing its own software for sale on the machine.â¦
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CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos and Declan McCullagh offer their thoughts on Bill Gates' call for businesses to help out more in the developing world.
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NEW DELHI -- Microsoft Corp. will distribute free software to nonprofit groups to boost charity in India, a company official said Monday.
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SINGAPORE: Microsoft Corp is expanding its community and economic development programmes in Asia as part of its global campaign to give poor people access to computers, the US software giant&#39;s chief executive said last Thursday.
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Dell Inc  and Microsoft Corp   are teaming up to release a Product Red computer,  donating up to $80 for every one sold to fund AIDS-fighting  drugs in Africa.
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The Microsoft chairman discusses where the XO laptop fits on his radar screen (not too high), as well as other efforts to bring low-cost computing to emerging markets.
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Microsoft has signed a pact to work with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to increase computer use, Internet access and teacher training in developing countries.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft will step up its investments in AsiaÂ over the next two years as part of a bid to strengthen its relationship with partners and corporate customers in the area of mission-critical technologies. "Over the next two years, we're going to invest about $14 million in resources and facilities," said Chris Sharp, Microsoft's Asia-Pacific general manager of server and tools products, during a phone interview. As part of these investments, Microsoft will assign 100 technical specialists to work with customers and ISVs (independent software vendors) on mission-critical software products, including Windows 2003 Server and SQL Server 2005. The company also plans to open two technology incubation centers in Seoul and Bangalore, India. "These technology centers are there to showcase the capabilities of server technology and help people port their applications to mission-critical hardware," Sharp said. Microsoft's planned investments in Asia will boost the effectiveness of the company's enterprise sales team in Asia, said Dane Anderson, head of research at Springboard Research. From a technology standpoint, Microsoft's products are competitive with offerings from rival vendors but the sales cycle for enterprise products is longer and more involved than for sales of desktop operating systems or application suites, Anderson said. "These investments help to address that," he said. Customers that have an established relationship also expect to benefit from the added investment and new technology centers. "We think it's pretty good for us,"James Kang, the chief information officer of NTUC Income Insurance Cooperative, noting that the incubation centers are available to help his company run simulations and test new applications.
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Microsoft is using a subscription-based service to combat Linux in developing markets.
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Dell Inc  and Microsoft Corp   are teaming up to release a Product Red computer that  donates up to $80 for every PC sold to buy and distribute  AIDS-fighting drugs in Africa.
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Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced Friday at the World Economic Forum that his foundation would give $306 million to use green technology and farming techniques to boost millions out of hunger and poverty.
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A campaign to get life-saving vaccines  to millions of children in poor countries received a $1 billion  cash boost from Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and the  government of Norway on Tuesday.
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NEW YORKâHewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp. are taking to the road with a new initiative to bring technology to small and midsize businesses in remote parts of the country.
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A combined PC, telephone and television is being used in aid projects in India.
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Microsoft Corp. sees potential to sell computer keyboards, mice and other hardware in emerging markets where software sales are hampered by widespread piracy, a sales executive said Wednesday.