Zhang Yaqin: China Is Becoming More And More Important In Microsoft'S Global Strategy.

On November 15th, Microsoft CEO Ballmer's visit to China in November 6th attracted the attention of many domestic media. However, his two day trip did not bring "explosive" news and huge investment, which somewhat disappointed the media.

In this regard, Zhang Yaqin, Microsoft global senior vice president and greater China agent CEO, said in an exclusive interview with Sina Technology, "Ballmer's visit to China is just a regular visit, nothing special.

Similar visits will become a norm in the future, because the Chinese market is becoming more and more important in Microsoft's global strategy.

Zhang Yaqin told sina science and technology that Ballmer's visit to China in November 6th was confirmed 6 months ago.

"Many media are concerned about the purpose of Ballmer's trip. Actually arranging his visit to Chengdu is hoping that he can have an important experience and understanding of China's West, so that Microsoft can further strengthen its cooperation with the western region."

On 11 6, Microsoft CEO Ballmer flew to Chengdu from India for a two day visit to China. This is the first time that he has visited western China. Previous visits to China have been carried out in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

In Chengdu, Ballmer visited China's software park Tianfu Software Park for the first time in Chengdu. At noon, he had lunch with entrepreneurs in Sichuan, including Changhong CEO Zhao Yong, new hope group president Liu Yonghao, and talked about enterprise informatization.

Zhang Yaqin told Sina technology that Ballmer's trip to Chengdu did not have any "specific tasks", so there was no concrete cooperation intention with Sichuan enterprises.

But one day before that, Zhang Yaqin signed a business agreement with Microsoft general manager of China's western region, Chen Qingzhan, and so on. The two sides agreed to cooperate in the optimization of IT core architecture and software version.

According to our understanding, Microsoft is not only buying the legitimate software of Chengda, but also providing IT core architecture optimization solution. This is the first time that Microsoft has cooperated with domestic enterprises before.

Analysts believe that this is the beginning of Microsoft's "software + service" mode application.

Zhang Yaqin said that the cooperation with Chengda has fulfilled Microsoft's commitment to the west, and is also the beginning of Microsoft's cooperation with western enterprises.

On 11 7, Ballmer attended the annual Microsoft Tech ED technical conference in the Great Hall of the people in Beijing, and delivered a keynote speech on "dynamic IT" at the conference. After the speech, he hurried to attend the signing ceremony of Microsoft and Founder computer cooperation.

This is the only signing ceremony attended by Ballmer.

According to Zhang Yaqin, Ballmer also visited the National People's Congress, Ministry of Commerce and state owned assets supervision and Administration Commission in addition to participating in these activities in Beijing.

All these are aimed at consolidating the liaison and relationship between Microsoft and the government departments, and no specific tasks.

In recent two years, Ballmer has visited China once a year, and every visit to China will bring "a great gift". When Ballmer visited China in 2006, Microsoft signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of information industry.

According to the agreement, in the next 5 years, Microsoft will invest not less than 250 million yuan in China through software and hardware technology training and communication, and the Ministry of information and production will give support to the above cooperation.

For Ballmer's "plain" visit to China, Zhang Yaqin said, "Ballmer's visit to China will become a norm in the future. He will visit China next year, and there will probably be no big cooperation announcement."

These visits are routine visits. "

Unlike the Ballmer's regular visit, the three IT multinational companies from Intel, EMC and CISCO also visited China in November and brought a lot of investment. CISCO CEO Chambers promised to invest 16 billion dollars in China in the next 3 to 5 years.

Although it is Chambers's sixth visit to China from the number of visits to China, his fifth visit to China was 3 years ago. Therefore, compared with other companies, Microsoft CEO Ballmer's visit to China is quite frequent, and this year, Bill Bill, chairman of the board of directors of Microsoft, also visited China.

The industry analysts believe that Microsoft's visit to China is different from that of other multinational companies, but Microsoft CEO's visit to China is "plain", but it reflects Microsoft's maturity and stability in the Chinese market.