What is happening in Microsoft Italy?

Today will be a day of truth for Microsoft in Europe. In fact, during the day, the ruling of the European Court of Justice is expected on the antitrust proceeding and on the tensions involving the American giant and the European Commission. Punto Informatico had the opportunity to ask a few questions to the new CEO of Microsoft Italy, Mario Derba on some of the “hot fronts” of the moment.

Punto Informatico: First mandatory question: will the sentence expected for today affect the plans for 2008 of the Italian division?
Mario Derba: I feel like excluding him. Obviously we look forward to the ruling, but I do not foresee any particular repercussions on our future strategies.

PI: Are you referring to Office 2008 for Mac?
MD: Office 2008 will be one of the major product innovations in the pipeline for the next few months.

PI: What are you going to move on in particular in the coming months?
MD: We mainly focus on two strategies: unified messaging and interoperability. By now the information and telecommunication technologies are widespread throughout the Italian territory. The objective therefore shifts to the ability to make the various devices communicate, avoiding dead times and dispersions in communications between email, mobile phone, fax and any other telecommunication tool.
Interoperability, on the other hand, is part of the strategy of opening up to other platforms used by customers, without principle preclusions.

PI: What is the target of this strategy?
MD: Above all Public Administration and small and medium enterprises, which could draw great advantages in terms of competitiveness from the new generation of IT devices.

PI: Have you made an initial assessment of the sales of Windows Vista?
MD: The figure for the end of July amounts to 60 million copies and over 2.2 million devices and peripherals that work with Vista.

PI: Looking at the market, do you expect an increase in the workforce next year?
MD: Every year we manage approximately 10 thousand curricula for the Italian offices. In recent years we have grown in the order of 10% and it is likely that we will confirm the figure also in 2008.

edited by Luigi dell’Olio