Microsoft plans to open development center in Estonia in fall

TALLINN - The software giant Microsoft is setting up a development center in Estonia which it hopes together with partners to open in the fall and which could enable local information technology companies to earn billions of kroons, the daily Postimees says.

A year should show whether the project is viable, Microsoft believes.

The development center is supposed to gather the best of local e-solutions, help fine-tune them into final products and make them available to Microsoft’s partners across the world, including other governments.

“We have the reputation of e-stonia but we have not been able to cash in on it,” Regional Affairs Minister Siim Kiisler said at the Microsoft reception in Ulemiste City on Thursday.

The head of Microsoft Eesti, Rain Laane, said the first step that needs to be taken is to put together a so-to-say telephone directory, gather the best e-state experience and then identify the solutions that could be taken to foreign markets.

Laane said Microsoft also could bring together other countries’ interested parties and Estonian e-state educators and visionaries.

Even if Microsoft is widely seen as the image of a global monopolistic corporation, the e-state competence center does not expect all the created solutions to work on the Microsoft platform, Laane said.

Jan Muhlfeit who is in charge of Microsoft’s European operations said that even if global wealth is at present moving from the west to the east, a small nation too can with the help of innovation and knowledge challenge the emerging Asian economies.

Kiisler underlined at the reception the state’s role in supporting the e-state export. He promised that fixing the muddle around intellectual property rights of e-solutions ordered by state institutions would be a priority.

He said the state would bring all public sector-held rights of IT solutions under one institution and orders for IT solutions also would be placed through one institution in the future.

Source: Invest in Estonia

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