Asia Pacific’s Growing Innovation-driven Economies Providing Strength in Challenging Global Environment

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 6 December 2011 – Emerging markets in Asia Pacific have the opportunity to become the big winners of a post-recession world if they continue to grow their focus on fostering innovation, developing businesses and increasing labour market efficiency, according to Microsoft Asia Pacific’s Vice President Alvaro Celis.

Speaking at Microsoft’s second annual Accelerating Asia Pacific summit, Celis highlighted the region’s strong performance against the challenging economic conditions and social change affecting many parts of the world. The region’s strong fundamentals bode well for increasing national competitiveness, he said in his keynote to an audience comprising media and analysts from throughout Asia.

“Innovation will drive the region’s national competitiveness and core to the rise of Asia has been a preparedness to stick to the course when it comes to the development of innovation, talent and infrastructure. This drive for change has seen growth from villages to skyscrapers in a single generation and a region of people with both tenacity for success today and a vision for the future,” added Celis.

He further said, to move towards an innovation-driven economy, Asian markets need to be tech-ready and focus on areas such as education and skills capacity building for workforce development; implementing e-government efficiencies to better serve citizens and businesses and nurturing the local innovation ecosystem by encouraging more private-public-partnerships.

TechSoup and Kavakatu Partnerships for Good
To ensure the benefits of technology are reaching as many individuals as possible, with the support of Deputy Minister Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir of the Ministry of International Trade & Industry, the Accelerating Asia Pacific summit also marked the official launch of two major investments by Microsoft to support civil society: TechSoup Asia for Malaysia and Kavakatu, the first globally available application built in Asia through the App.Incubator partnership.

“I am pleased to have been given the honour to unveil one of Microsoft’s global programmes in Malaysia which provides software to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) through TechSoup Asia. This programme has been rolled-out in 38 countries and has benefited more than 40,000 NGOs worldwide and I believe local NGOs will be most happy to participate in this programme,” said Deputy Minister Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir, whose speech was read by Dato’ Noharuddin Nordin, Chief Executive Officer of Malaysian Industrial Development Authority (MIDA), at the event.

The TechSoup Asia programme, which will be available for the first time in Malaysia, will allow qualified, Malaysian-based NGOs to request for a wide range of software product donations, including operating system software, Microsoft Office and server products.

Mike Yeaton, Vice President of TechSoup Asia said, “We are very excited to be partnering Microsoft and showing a joint commitment to the NGO sector. With the availability of TechSoup in Malaysia there will be broader availability of software through donations to NGOs so in real terms this means NGOs can get on with their goals of addressing social challenges knowing that we are supporting their software needs.”

Infoshare, a Microsoft non-profit partner from Sri Lanka were also on hand to launch Kavakatu – a web-based application for monitoring and evaluation of civil society projects. Built with feedback from NGOs around Asia Pacific, it creates a standardised set of indicators to reuse across projects, or can be customised to track on a per-project basis. Kavakatu is the first application from the Microsoft and Infoshare collaboration App.Incubator.

Globally, Microsoft’s software donations have totaled more than US$3.9 billion since they began in 1998, and will be further augmented through TechSoup Asia. More details on the Microsoft Software Donation programme and Kavakatu, including product information and eligibility criteria, can be found at: www.techsoup.asia and www.kavakatu.com respectively.