Prepare passports for Microsoft customs clearance!

Following the experience in Great Britain and the United States, Microsoft’s next electronic customs office project could be in Romania. Jean Philippe Courtois, chairman of the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) division, discussed this issue with IT&C minister Dan Nica, during a visit intended to explore the Government’s plans for boosting the IT industry.

“We talked about the bricks the authorities will use in building the e-government, about the technology that does things faster and better,” Courtois said. He added that intellectual property producers were expecting to see the Government enforce the law effectively, that is making an example to discourage the use of pirated software.

“The Government is very determined to take action. But Romania ranks among the top three European countries in terms of piracy rate (however lowered from 93% to 77%),” Courtois says.

The e-customs project is one of the 24 recently presented by the ministry run by Dan Nica. It involves the complete automation of customs collection and the related transactions, online connections with the companies dealing in import and export, as well as an operational link connecting every border checkpoints in an intranet-type network.

“In fact, the entire Government has to have a joint messaging infrastructure, an Intranet between every minister and ministry,” Courtois says.

On the other hand, Microsoft Romania is planning to concentrate on SMEs in the future, as most of them have not even tried to use the web as a place for business.

To boost sales, the company relies on its PC making partners and on localising products. Office XP will be available in Romania by August and, along with this all-purpose suite, the company will be more aggressive in promoting custom solutions for various fields, from telecoms to complete platforms for banks and e-tailing.

“We are expecting to become more visible not only by selling traditional products, but also by being part of the teams to provide solutions, ” Jean-Philippe Courtois says.

Should we put the new breeze blowing from Redmont in a single phrase, we could simply say: Everything’s moving on the Web! In other words, our applications and files will be somewhere up in a “cloud,” ready for us to use them whenever we need them.