Microsoft will send experts to 30 software parks across the nation this year to help software makers develop enterprise-level applications, a senior company official said yesterday.

"Our biggest investment in China this year, regarding software... is that we are offering support to the software parks, 30 in number across the country... through our engineers," said Peter Cray, general manager of Microsoft's business and marketing operations in China.

He made the remarks on Microsoft Day 2005, which focused on enterprise users.

It was the last day of the annual marketing promotion that began on April 19.

Cray declined to elaborate, but acknowledged the collaboration is also intended to promote domestic vendors' development of applications run on Longhorn, a next generation operating system heavily invested in by Microsoft.

Longhorn is "a tremendous opportunity for Chinese software makers in developing a new cluster of applications," according to Cray.

Such a chance was unavailable in the Windows era, when overseas developers started much earlier than local developers.

Longhorn is to be launched at the end of next year, replacing Windows and boasting much improved performance.

The company so far has more than 6,000 people working on the new operating system, and there are many more engineers at Microsoft's partners working on applications development.

Although Microsoft's senior management team agreed to plough funds into China five years ago, the software giant's business is not yet comparable to that in many other countries.

"Our success in China 100 per cent relies on our partners... but we are not happy with our progress (in building local partnerships) if compared with our intent, and we will double our efforts next year, in particular working with large partners," said Cray.

Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said during his speech yesterday that Microsoft will help the country achieve additional IT innovations, as global business competition transforms from manufacturing sectors to the knowledge-based economy, and differentiation from other enterprises has also shifted, from focusing on lower costs to establishing information superiority.

"We are very clear about our continuous and significant commitment to China in investing in the local software industry," said Cray.

"And we are also passionate about our partnership with the Chinese Government in building an IT eco-system... Our investment level in research and development has won appreciate from the government."

(China Daily 07/01/2005 page10)