Confed seeks MS alliance for 10-city program

Chennai: Confed-ITTA is planning to align with Microsoft for the 10-city training program that it has proposed to conduct from March. The initiative would be discussed with the software major when representatives of Confed-ITTA meet up with David Finn, Associate General Counsel-Worldwide Anti-piracy and Anti-counterfeiting, Microsoft Corporation, on Feb 18 in Mumbai. Finn is on a three day visit to India.

“We had held talks with Microsoft last year for resolving the issues pertaining to their anti-piracy drives. The vendor had asked us to help them in their drive to stop piracy, which Confed-ITA is doing in an aggressive manner. However, from their end there has been no education programs for the partners or end-users, which would help curb piracy from its roots. The reason cited for this is lack of local resources. On the other hand Confed-ITTA has planned a 10-city training program and we would like to associate with Microsoft for this, which would benefit both of us in the anti-piracy initiative,” said PN Prasad, President, Confed-ITA.

Confed-ITA would be represented by Prasad and S Karthikeyan, Advisor for Confed and former President. Microsoft has also invited Mumbai-based Trade Association of Information Technology (TAIT) for the meeting with Finn.

When contacted, a spokesperson in Microsoft claimed that David Finn would be visiting India this week and the meeting that has been planned with the channel associations are regular business meetings. “As a part of Finn's business engagements, he is also spending sometime with a few channel associations in India. These interactions are routine business meetings,” the spokesperson informed.