Taiwan government, Chunghwa Telecom and Microsoft sign MOU on cloud computing

Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) and Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) each signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Microsoft on November 4 for cooperation and R&D on cloud computing technologies.

The MOEA and Microsoft will jointly invest to establish a Software and Service Excellence Center in Taipei within a year, with the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and Institute for Information Industry (III) mainly responsible for operations while Microsoft provides technological support, MOEA indicated.

The center will aim to make Taiwan an important base in the global cloud computing industry, MOEA emphasized. The center will help Taiwan-based hardware and software players offer cloud computing services on PCs, handsets and other kinds of hand-held devices as well as promote the use cloud computing in agriculture, green energy, medicare, biotechnology, culture and tourism, the six industries the Taiwan government has enacted policies to promote, MOEA indicated.

CHT's cooperation with Microsoft will focus on offering mobile value-added services using cloud computing technologies and platforms provided by Microsoft, CHT said. Microsoft's vision for cloud computing aims to integrate PCs, handsets, and TVs with cloud-computing-based services. Cooperation with CHT will help realize this vision, CHT quoted Steve Ballmer as saying.

The cooperation will cover SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) models, CHT indicated. Through the cooperation, CHT plans to set up the first Azure platform in the Greater China market offering cloud-based services to enterprises, CHT noted.