Microsoft tackles piracy in Africa

ITWeb: How are you going to tackle the "piracy" issues that exist in the region?

Piracy remains rampant in our region - around 80% of the software on the continent is pirated.

Thapelo Lippe, GM, Microsoft East and Southern Africa (ESA)

Lippe: Piracy remains rampant in our region - around 80% of the software on the continent is pirated, meaning the industry is only really reflecting 20% of its current commercial potential. Computers running counterfeit or unlicensed software are a challenge that we will be focusing heavily on in the coming months. We will be promoting the value of genuine Microsoft software, the risks of counterfeit software and the general awareness around the legal issues of infringing on software licensing. We are working closely with copyright commissions, patent offices and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) across the region.

ITWeb: Has this been successful?

Lippe: It takes time to see the impact. In SA, piracy rates have decreased. Last year, it had a software piracy rate of 37%, just two points over the global average of 35%. It has decreased significantly over the years.

ITWeb: What are the immediate plans for the region?

Lippe: We have just seen the global launch of Windows Vista, the 2007 Office system and Exchange Server 2007 - three of the most significant solutions sets that we have ever launched. There will be local launches across ESA during February and March. We'll be spending plenty of time with our customers and partners, given that over 90% of our revenue is driven by partners.

ITWeb: The region you are operating in is challenged in the socioeconomic sense; how can Microsoft make its products more affordable to users?

Lippe: Microsoft has a pricing structure that takes emerging markets like Africa into consideration. And we have several iterations of our new solutions (including a Starter Edition of Windows Vista) to drive lower-cost computing and meet the needs of different sectors of the market. These are priced accordingly. Perhaps one key area is the language interface packs. These can be downloaded, free of charge, and installed as a skin on top of the English-language versions of the software that transform Windows XP and Office XP into Afrikaans, isiZulu, Kiswahili and Setswana. We are working on 13 African languages for Windows Vista, including Amharic, Hausa, Igbo, isiXhosa, Kinyarwanda, Sesotho, Wolof and Yoruba.

ITWeb: There is much debate around paying for Microsoft licences, when some operating systems are free. What is your response to this argument?

Lippe: Microsoft is not against OSS [open source software]. We feel it will continue to play an important role in the software development ecosystem. Both commercial software and OSS offer specific advantages. The optimal environment for innovation is the coexistence of OSS and commercial software within the greater software ecosystem. There is the perception that OSS is free. Software is a very small part of the total cost of an IT solution for businesses. Several respected IT analysts have looked at the total costs of deploying and maintaining OSS solutions across a variety of IT workloads and, in almost all cases, found that Microsoft solutions were less expensive. Microsoft believes in the market's ability to determine the success and failure of various licensing and distribution models, and opposes restrictions favouring any model at the expense of another.