Microsoft launches Project Bhasha

New Delhi: Microsoft Corporation India today announced the launch of Project Bhasha, an extensive programme aimed at accelerating local language computing in India.

Under the aegis of Project Bhasha, Microsoft will focus its efforts along four key areas primarily — product localisation, government collaboration, academia / developer integration, and building a local language IT ecosystem through community / industry participation.

As a key deliverable in its product localisation efforts, Microsoft will roll out interfaces for its flagship products Windows and Office in 14 Indian languages essentially — Assamese, Bengali, Gujarat, Gurumukhi, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

On the government collaboration front, Microsoft will work with the central government for adoption of Unicode as a common development standard for local language application development as well as facilitate the creation of a vibrant Indic community.

Microsoft will also engage with state governments for joint development and validation of the local language interface packs, setting up of local language labs and creation of state information portals.

In order to initiate integration of the academia and research institutions in the local language IT wave, Microsoft will set up five state-of-the-art centres of excellence equipped with local language computing tools, which can be used for localised software development work.

Microsoft will also invest in a dedicated training effort by conducting workshops on Unicode and local language application development for developers and the ISV (independent software vendors) community. Additionally, in order to encourage localised application development, Microsoft will sponsor select applications that will be ported on Unicode.

Furthermore, to create an online repository of best practices for all Indian language application development information as well as provide application development support and create a community of linguists, local language enthusiasts and academicians, Microsoft will launch an online community portal.

Microsoft will also collaborate with industry associations like Nasscom to champion the cause of the local language computing industry and demonstrate the potential / revenue opportunity in this latent segment.

Says Microsoft Corporation India managing director Rajiv Kaul: "We view Project Bhasha as a collaborative programme for bringing together the governments, the academia and research institutions, the vendors and the industry associations on a common ground for backing local language computing. We are confident that particularly in a country like India; localisation will drive the next wave of computing by enabling access to technology for a broader section of society and thereby helping eliminate the current digital divide."

"Microsoft has been a forerunner in the localisation revolution, extending the reach of IT across a diverse set of multilingual communities in languages they are comfortable with. Worldwide our flagship products offer support for 38 languages. We have focused R&D teams working round the clock to create new benchmarks on the product localisation front," says Craig Mundie, chief technology officer, Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft is one of the first companies to invest in developing international standards and technologies based products, with the launch of the Windows 2000 range of operating systems. This was followed by Office 2000 South Asia Edition that provided basic enablement for Hindi and Tamil.

In 2002, Microsoft launched Office XP, which extended enablement to nine Indian languages. In the middle of last year, Microsoft announced its first localised offering — the Share Point Portal Server. And now, the launch of Project Bhasha provides an integrated approach from Microsoft to take IT to the grassroots in India and usher in local language computing.

Microsoft India's localisation programme has seen significant success in terms of customer, partner and solutions momentum. Microsoft has contributed to several projects undertaken by state governments across the country including amongst other the Crime and Criminal Information System for the National Crime Records Bureau in New Delhi; Nai Disha, a government to citizen portal for the government of Haryana; a corporate intranet portal solution with a Kannada interface for Rural Development; and Panchayati Raj, Vidya Nidhi project undertaken by the University of Mysore aimed at creating a national digital repository of electronic thesis and dissertation.

Today, Microsoft is working with over 50 partner organisations across the country for developing Indian language based solutions / applications.