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Microsoft to launch digital program to support Mexican SMEs

"The economy generally reactivates from the bottom up, from SMEs to large companies," Microsoft's Senior Director Marketing and Operations in Mexico, Gabriel Andrada, told Milenio

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  • The project to support SMEs is independent of the investment of 1.1 billion dollars, during the next five years, which CEO Satya Nadella announced on February 20;
  • Microsoft’s 5-year investment plan is focused on SMEs.

Microsoft is about to announce, together with the federal government, a strategy to help Mexican small and medium-sized companies to recover from the economic crisis through digitization.

“It is necessary to accelerate the reactivation of the SME sector; give them tools to be able to use technology as an enabler so that they can quickly, dynamically and in good weather, bring out their products and services,” Microsoft’s Senior Director Marketing and Operations in Mexico, Gabriel Andrada, told Milenio.

For the exec, it is essential to take advantage of the progress in digitization achieved during the pandemic months, and for this they have to support SMEs, one of the sectors most affected by the economic crisis.

“The economy generally reactivates from the bottom up, from SMEs to large companies.”

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The project to support SMEs is independent of the investment of 1.1 billion dollars, during the next five years, which CEO Satya Nadella announced on February 20, through a video in the morning conference of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Regarding this investment, Andrada explained that Microsoft decided to create a cluster of data centers in Mexico: spaces that house servers to store and process the information that circulates on the network, and that are the support of the digital transformation. Having these data centers in the country will help public institutions and companies to digitize.

According to him, there are 60 regions of this type distributed in 22 countries and Mexico is the most recent to join the list, and the second in Latin America. The plan contemplates the construction of at least two data centers, which will allow developers of cloud solutions to provide services, not only for Mexican companies and institutions, but for those in Central America and northern South America.

Microsoft’s 5-year investment plan also contemplates education as one of its main axes, made up of virtual classrooms, as an effort to help students to develop skills for the use of new technologies.

Specialized laboratories in collaboration with public universities in the country are also on the project’s roadmap, in order to provide an educational platform focused on the development of these skills.

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