Vietnam Wishes to Promote Co-operation with Microsoft in IT

After his separate meetings with Vietnamese State and Government leaders, despite his tight working schedule, Bill Gates spent 90 minutes attending an exchange meeting with Vietnamese students at the Hanoi University of Technology. Thousands of Vietnamese students from universities and colleges in Hanoi gathered at the Hanoi University of Technology in the hope of seeing their idol, creating an exciting atmosphere. Bill Gates arrived amid many Vietnamese students, who tried to touch the hand of the man who has made a significant contribution to world science. However, only few of them were selected to be present in the meeting hall and had a direct dialogue with Gates while many students had to remain outside and watch the meeting on television.

 

They were not disappointed. The man, whose assets are higher than Vietnam’s GDP in a year, had an open and friendly exchange meeting, answering questions raised by Vietnamese IT students. With a simple style and smiles, Bill Gates won the hearts of the students inside and outside the meeting hall. He talked about the future of IT and provided advice for the Vietnamese software industry, as well as answered questions about his private life.

 

He said that it was a task of Microsoft to bring modern technology to people. He affirmed that technology helped people fully tap their potential and capability. Technology has greatly helped students. With a PC and an Internet connection, students can search for anything they need from the Internet.

 

He predicted that in ten years’ time the boundary between PCs and phones would become slimmer and perhaps, phones would have more power than PCs. Based on his forecast, Bill Gates said that Microsoft was developing software products with advantages of phones and PCs and would cut prices further.

 

Talking about the key to his success, Bill Gates affirmed that one should concentrate on one field and have good understanding about it. He said that 20 years ago it had been so risky to think about launching a big volume of software of high quality at low costs. However, he and Microsoft proved that the success would come to only those who dare to think and do. He advised Vietnamese students not to follow him and drop their university studies in order to do business.

 

Another message Bill Gates sent to Vietnamese students was that they should use the Internet further as he said that the Internet had helped other Asian economies to gain miracle development. He ended the exchange meeting by presenting scholarships to ten students with outstanding study achievements.

 

A beginning of co-operation with Microsoft 

After his impressive exchange meeting with Vietnamese students, Bill Gates had a meeting with Vietnamese IT enterprises at the Hanoi Opera House. In his speech, Bill Gates said that Vietnamese IT should gain experience from many other countries, instead of only India and China.

For the development of IT, he stressed that Vietnam should concentrate on human resources development. Accordingly, Vietnam needs high quality training centres or the country should send their programmers to the US for training. Earlier in his meeting with Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, Bill Gates accepted the Prime Minister’s proposal that Microsoft would help Vietnam build an international-level IT university.

 

During his visit, Bill Gates visited a culture-cum-post office in Bac Ninh province and joined a ceremony to launch the One Click project and the Unlimited Potential Programme of Microsoft in Vietnam.

 

One Click is a project implemented by VDC, Microsoft and CMS, providing CMS’s package PC products, with Microsoft licensed software, and VDC’s Internet connection.

 

Apart from the One Click project, Bill gates launched the Unlimited Potential Programme of Microsoft in Vietnam, which is the biggest project in Southeast Asia in IT training and development.

Participating in the programme are Microsoft, USAID, Qualcomm and EVN Telecom. The programme will provide Microsoft software-installed PCs at low cost for teaching and training in 64 provinces and cities in Vietnam. Microsoft will provide teaching documents and CDs in Vietnamese and software for 500 training centres nationwide.