TAIPEI (AFP) - US software giant Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday signed an agreement with Taiwan to jointly establish a research centre here for the development of Internet computing technology.
Microsoft and Taiwan's economic ministry will establish the "Software and Services Excellence Center" on the island within a year, the company said in a statement, without providing details on the investment.
The venture was aimed at helping local electronics firms develop devices and services related to "cloud computing".
The concept refers to computer applications or data storage as services hosted online by technology firms instead of being installed and maintained on users' machines.
The centre will be established before the year's end, according to Ming-ji Wu, chief of the economic ministry's Department of Industrial Technology.
Microsoft plans to spend 9.5 billion US dollars in research and development projects in 2010, a considerable portion of which will go to cloud-computing technologies, the company's chief executive Steve Ballmer said here.
-- Dow Jones Newswires contributed to this story --
