Microsoft's international man a mystery no more

We all understand how important the digital divide is. We opened up a refurbishment centre in Namibia, and that is just one piece of an end-to-end initiative where we collect PCs and refurbish them. This particular initiative was set up to install free version of Windows and deploy that into schools.

And what about the challenge presented by open source software in emerging markets?
At the end of the day open source software is a reality. But if we end up delivering more value for the local economy, I am confident people will see that value.

Microsoft launched its refurbisher programme only after intense criticism for the way it treated Australian charity PCs for Kids. How do you tackle perceptions that this was a wholly reactive strategy?
We created our Authorised Refurbisher Programme two years ago and we have seen a great response to this initiative. In Europe, because of the environmental directive that means companies now have to recycle, there is a need for agencies to recycle in a proper way. It is a fantastic opportunity for them to help.

Overall I feel pretty good. The key thing is to make it sustainable, to have people learning in a professional manner. We do some training in developing countries already. This provides access to affordable to technology. So what we do is provide access to software at low cost to schools. We have also put in place a structure of training products for teachers. The third build block is providing tools to connect the teacher community and build digital content. We have 62 agreements in Europe and Africa now. In the past couple of years 270,000 students have benefited from this training.

So what now?
I plan to visit 20 countries in the next few months, to start learning and immersing myself in some Asian countries such as Japan and China. I will also do a tour of Latin America — there is an interesting culture and some great interest in technology there.

In China our company has made number of forays, not just as a market to sell but also as a market with great skills and competencies. We recently announced a joint venture in China, so you can expect us to really invest there and still have some issues as you would expect in terms of intellectual property and so on.

How can you realistically tackle the issue of unlicensed software in emerging markets?
Our experience is that it takes time for different societies to tackle or realise what intellectual property is all about. It is not like you can have one approach that works everywhere. As you deepen your relationship with governments, they have to decide wither intellectual property will be important. If they want to be serious they have to put a stake in the ground and say 'we will not use unlicensed software in government'.

We are looking at news ways for legal users to get extra stuff, in terms of software and services, by virtue of being legal. The experience of using legal versions of the software is actually much better and richer, and it is a place where I would expect to see local strategies. You will see many more initiatives on this front to come in the autumn.