Microsoft will double its number of employees in the Central and Eastern

Europe over the next three years, and will very soon announce a significant investment in the region, Vahe Torossian, the vice-president for this area stated at the end of last week. Microsoft has more than 1,200 employees in the Central and Eastern Europe, where it opened its first subsidiary in 1992. “Microsoft focuses on the Central and Eastern Europe, due to the outstanding potential this region has,” said Vahe Torossian. That is although “not even the governmental officials fully realise it most of the time,” Torossian added. The company is interested in a steady and sustainable growth in the area, and one of the ways to achieve that is to implant research, development and support centres. Such centres are only present in Croatia (applications developed in partnership), Czech Republic (e-learning) and Serbia (Tablet PC technology research). These centres will soon be joined by new ones. “Microsoft Romania has already decided for one or two more major investments located in the Central and Eastern Europe. They concern Technical Support Centres. Details will come in the next few weeks,” stated Vahe Torossian. Technical support centres provide sophisticated services to Microsoft”s corporate clients. The Microsoft official did not care to reveal any more details as to the location of the new investments. Romania is, obviously, among the candidates and it may very well be one of the winners, given the increase in interest on the part of big IT&C names for placing development, research or service centres in this country. ZF