Jean-Philippe Courtois speaks during the interview.

KUWAIT: As a cloud-based company, Microsoft is bringing the best innovations - boosting productivity with the Office 365 platform, and building intelligent services with smart connections, agents and internal scenarios, said Jean-Philippe Courtois -President, Microsoft International, during an exclusive interview with the Kuwait Times. Talking about the new technologies, he explained how Microsoft is enabling businesses of various sizes to become digital and spoke about the company's strong partnership with government authorities in Kuwait. Excerpts:

Kuwait Times: Can you explain how Microsoft is at the forefront of today's digital and cloud transformation?

Jean-Philippe Courtois: We are clearly growing as a cloud-based company, and are enabling businesses of various sizes to become digital. In order to achieve this, we are bringing the best innovations - boosting productivity with the Office 365 platform, and building intelligent services with smart connections, agents, internal scenarios. We are also advancing the accessibility and capabilities of personal computing to any application and any device, and the most interesting of these is the innovative interface of Hololens, which puts the customer into an immersive virtual world to interact with content or each other.

KT: Can you elaborate on how Microsoft empowers public sector in Kuwait to leverage cloud solution in cutting down on cost?

Courtois :We have a strong partnership with the government authorities in Kuwait. A great example of this is our work with the Ministry of Finance to digitize its forms and processes using Microsoft Cloud. The Central Agency for Information Technology (CAIT) as well is a very important government body using Cloud, and the Ministry of Education is a great example as well. We have helped various public authorities in Kuwait to leverage the cloud and do more with less.

KT: How Microsoft is supporting Kuwait government's future growth plans?

Courtois : We believe that growth is enabled by using and leveraging the core of innovation and combining the cloud with business agility principles. We see this approach as fitting well with the national growth agenda, and will help the Kuwait economy. This unified approach will help and ignite youth and entrepreneurs, young developers, and the start-up community. There is a wealth of great skills and human capital in Kuwait that needs to be ignited and we work with them as well. We also see efficiencies that we can bring to the table for existing natural resources companies (Oil and Gas) to do an even better job - at lower cost - with the help of the cloud. For the government, the focus is in helping them to be more efficient in serving citizens and offering new services, specifically around e-Government and its immense possibilities.

KT: What are Microsoft's long-term investment goals in research and commitment to product innovation?

Courtois : As a company, we are one of the largest product innovators in terms of investment, spending more than $10 billion annually. One of the biggest focus areas is innovation in the cloud and its potential. Some of our newer services can be extremely sector-specific, for example, an Oil & Gas company can connect their drilling engines, capture all the data on seismic exploration, and can ultimately predict what the outcome of the drilling would be, from a production and a financial perspective. All of this means that there is a lot of innovation we do, to provide solutions, services, and platforms to customers and developers. We will consistently grow our innovation investments globally, and in the Gulf states, we will use and leverage these investments for futuristic solutions relevant to the Government, the business community, and the youth.

KT: Explain how Microsoft helps create new technologies that explore the frontiers of next-generation computing.

Courtois : The Hololens is a perfect example of how we help create new technologies that explore - and redefine - the frontiers of next-generation computing. With our vision for Hololens, we are providing a developer kit. It is not a consumer product yet, but we are sure that it is just a matter of time. We are looking at the various applications that the technology can have, from designing new cars and new engines for jets, to internal collaboration for people of the same company but in different countries. We believe that there is immense potential with all of our technology, not only what is immediately evident. This is where we have the edge in terms of innovation - finding unique and innovative applications for technology.

By Islam Al-Sharaa.