In an exclusive interview recently to KUNA-Kuwait News Agency, Regional Director of Microsoft-Kuwait, Ihab Mustafa stated that the Software piracy in Kuwait is over 60 percent, the highest in the Gulf area.
Mustafa said, “This would immensely and negatively impact the creation of a well-seated information technology industry in the country. Reasons behind such phenomenon are attributed to non-existence of intellectual property rights’ law, in addition to inconsistency in implementing current monitoring laws.”
Mustafa also felt that, the lengthy tendering procedures and the “complicated” governmental purchasing system also have a negative impact. Such obstacles tend to make investors in the technology industry to shy away from doing business in Kuwait, a thing that would also affect the creation of new jobs and diversifying the country’s national income.
Mustafa emphasised that, Microsoft sees the Kuwaiti market as one of the most significant in the Middle East and North Africa region. Such vision is based on the country’s very ambitious developmental plan and on its highly-advanced educational system. Microsoft-Kuwait is offering its clients many services as part of its adaptation plan to use information technology (IT) as one of the key factors for achieving objectives of private sector institutions to increase profitability and cut costs, in addition to achieving the objectives of the government sector in the provision of better and faster government services through e-government.
Microsoft-Kuwait is working relentlessly to meet objectives of the development plan through engaging in different studies on how IT, mainly Microsoft’s, impact the 12 pillars of competitiveness determinants set by the World Economic Forum of competitiveness for growing economies, Mustafa pointed out.
On its involvement in e-government projects, he said, Microsoft-Kuwait is providing well-trained staff to take part in achieving those projects by developing software in compliance with the country’s traditions.
Mustafa further added, that Microsoft-Kuwait is collaborating with many governmental entities, mainly the information technology central authority, in chalking out e-government mainframe regardless of current technology in place.
On cloud computing, Mustafa said Kuwait had been using Microsoft’s cloud computing for years now through many of the company’s products, such as Hotmail, Windows Live, Live Messenger, the search engine Bing and the online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service Xbox LIVE.
Cloud computing refers to the provision of computational resources on demand via a computer network. Microsoft had spent some US$ 10 billion in cloud computing research in the last few years and is still moving forward with it.
Kuwait’s infrastructure is capable of absorbing cloud computing, with communication networks establish according to international standards in order to link concerned governmental and educational bodies,” Mustafa concluded.
