Microsoft to invest Lm20m in Malta

Microsoft will be investing an estimated Lm20 million in Malta over the next three years, an investment which was likely to disappear if Malta did not join the European Union, Justice and Local Government Minister Austin Gatt said yesterday.

He was speaking at a news conference shortly after flying back from Paris where he signed a memorandum of understanding with Microsoft on a number of areas of cooperation aimed at "rapidly transforming the island into a European ICT-jewel in the Mediterranean".

Among other forms of investment, the agreement caters for the setting up in Malta of the first technology centre of excellence in the region, giving access to source-codes.

The Malta government will also be enrolled in a security programme, and the island's 70,000 students will be offered software at give-away prices.

Calling it a "fantastic deal", Dr Gatt said Microsoft had chosen Malta from an analysis of the 10 countries aspiring to EU membership in 2004.

Talks with the software giant had been going on for the past four months. The last round of discussions was held in Paris on Wednesday when Mr Gatt met Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

The agreement was sealed on Wednesday with the signing of the memorandum of understanding between Dr Gatt and the president of Microsoft operations in Europe, Mr Jean Phillip Coutois.

Dr Gatt said the talks yesterday were mainly focused on rapidly expanding Malta as a regional centre of excellence for software development, especially now with its privileged potential accession to the single European market.

The Microsoft move, he said, was expected to attract a number of independent software vendors to set up their operations in Malta.

Microsoft had agreed to invest heavily in Malta and its students and employees with a view to being a key player in the further development of the country's information society and economy.

Giving more details about the agreement, he said the technology centre of excellence would allow local and foreign software development companies access to the source codes of the latest releases of Microsoft operating systems.

They would also have access to Microsoft's global marketing and technical support networks and a host of other related services to be able to build their applications more effectively and market them successfully.

The centre would be open to both local software development companies and foreign ones.

It would generate wealth in real terms for Malta through local software houses, Dr Gatt said. He explained that if a local company succeeded in developing a product based on Microsoft products and managed to sell it and support it via Microsoft channels, the returns would be enormous given the global reach of the multinational corporation.

The centre would also generate wealth for the country through foreign independent software vendors, who would either be charged for using the centre or would share the revenue realised from the successful development and sales of the product.

Moreover, independent software vendors setting up operations in Malta would be opening up a large number of employment opportunities for Maltese IT specialists.

Currently, a large number of foreign independent software vendors were migrating their applications from the Windows 2000 platform to the Windows XP environment.

This offered a unique, timely niche that Malta could tap, especially following EU membership, Dr Gatt said.

He said that through the agreement, the Maltese government would be one of the first governments in Europe to be enrolled in the Government Security Programme, access to which was currently only available to NATO and Russia.

This would provide a wide and invaluable range of technology-related benefits to government including access to source code and expansive disclosure of Microsoft technical information.

These tools would enable the government to step up the efficiency and security of its internal and e-government systems. They would also provide unique research and development opportunities for employees within MITTS Ltd.

Dr Gatt said that in its bid to eradicate the digital divide and to boost the information and communication technology skills of Maltese students, Microsoft would be subsidising over 98 per cent of the cost of Microsoft Office XP Professional and Visual Basic Studio software. These would be available to students, from primary to tertiary, at Lm3 when their actual cost was around Lm550. This alone constituted an investment of Lm15 million.

Apart from the software itself, Microsoft would also be providing the full upgrades of newer versions in the following three years.

Microsoft will also be installing the latest version of Microsoft Encarta in each classroom in primary schools, in the computer laboratories of secondary schools, public libraries and internet centres in local councils.

Microsoft Windows XP - the most popular operating system in the world - would now also be including the Maltese language as standard.

Dr Gatt said that another aspect of the agreement was the setting up of a Microsoft IT Academy in Malta offering over 25 high-end training specialisations and certifications to Maltese students and employees.

The academy would be offering training at the university, MCAST, the Swatar Training Centre and the Employment and Training Corporation. Microsoft would be providing the necessary software and training expertise.

Another aspect of the agreement was a programme of cooperation in making information and communication technologies more accessible to persons with some form of disability.

The cooperation would be in the form of direct assistance to individuals with disabilities through the provision of selected software at a heavily subsidised price and in the form of the development of specialised software for persons with visual and/or hearing impairments.

The agreement also covers the establishment of a fellowship in governance between the Institute of Public Administration and Management at the university and Microsoft, whereby Microsoft would provide direct technical and financial assistance for the development of ICT-governance within the public administration.

An unprecedented joint effort, the minister said, was to establish Malta as a best practice location for the protection of intellectual property rights, hence further enhancing the country's image and reputation as a software development hub.

The protection of these rights was a critical success factor in the positive development of any software development industry and Malta could be promoted as a country which strongly respected them.

Microsoft would be providing software, equipment, training and continuous technical support to the key Maltese agencies involved in this effort.

Microsoft would soon also be employing their first Maltese employees in Malta. The first position to be created was that of Business Development Manager who would be primarily attracting international business for the technology centre of excellence.

Dr Gatt said Microsoft will also be holding its next country general managers' meeting for its top 50 general managers in Malta in the last week of April this year.

This event, he said, was expected to attract enormous interest and would invariably serve as a direct link to the major decision-makers of the software multi-national corporation.