Broadband outreach to drive growth
Microsoft top official says
Emilio Umeoka
A Microsoft top official has linked the overall growth of a country with its IT infrastructure related to broadband penetration, and how new devices are used there. Right broadband penetration will also help drive the GDP and per capita income, said Emilio Umeoka, the outgoing Asia Pacific president of the global software giant. "Penetration of mobile phone is fairly big, which is close to 60 million, but if you look at the overall PC shipments at present, it is around 300,000 units, which is very small compared to the size of the population," he said. There might be a trend to move from phones to PC or other forms in terms of access to technology. Microsoft will also pair up with the government of Bangladesh to work in the education sector of the country, he said. "One of the areas that is being discussed is education," Umeoka said. Umeoka sat with The Daily Star recently, as he came to Dhaka on a short visit and shared how Microsoft can drive a more technologically savvy group of students, how to prepare them for the future needs and how to scale up growth. "These all can certainly lead to a more vibrant IT economy." Microsoft is working with the government to provide the right tools, creating the right solutions for the students from the grade 12 up to the university level. It also provides some of the worldwide programmes such as Microsoft DreamSpark, a programme where technical university students can have access to the development tools for free during their college period. And if they want to launch a company, there is another programme -- BizSpark, he said. BizSpark offers the Microsoft programmes free for the first three years so that the students can use it and create jobs. "So education is the first pillar." He also talked about how Microsoft can support the government on the e-governance initiatives, how to increase transparency in procurement and document handling or information related to natural disaster. "I think there are several fronts where Microsoft and its partners can contribute to these factors," Umeoka said. Another concern of Umeoka was that Bangladesh continues to be a very high piracy-rate country and he believes that there should be a balance between access to technology, purchase power parity and new business models. Awareness should be created on intellectual property (IP), which is relevant in terms of the growth of the country. "It will be very hard for Bangladesh to create an IT strong economy if it doesn't sustain with IP. Then companies from here will not be able to export technology, and one key component is Digital Bangladesh," he said. While talking about the new products that will come next year, he mentioned Office 365 that combines the popular Office desktop suite with cloud-based versions of Microsoft's Office, Outlook, Sharepoint, and Lync applications. "If you don't have enough broadband, the quality of these services will not be very good," said. "We have had several discussions in the last couple of days with possible partners that can be delivering Microsoft cloud services locally. Because in some countries you have the necessity of having some of the information staying within the country. So local partners will be the key component of the cloud distribution system." About the new Windows Phone, he said, at present it is going through the localisation priority process. "Now we have availability mostly in English in most countries." He also said, Windows 7 has been a key success. "One year into the launch, selling of 240 million units is a great success. Windows Phone has also put us back in the game of smartphones where we started long time ago. Social connectivity with Facebook and Twitter brings the experience to a different level," he said. Bangladesh is a very vibrant market with a population of almost 160 million, and mobile is well developed here, Umeoka. "Key opportunities that we see are how we can take IT to the other levels and other devices as well. So hopefully the broadband penetration will increase, and we are certainly here for the long run and hopefully we'll make progress as much as Bangladesh will make."
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