BANGALORE: Microsoft Corporation India Pvt Ltd has announced the opening of a Microsoft Technology Center at Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) in Karnataka. The center has been launched as a part of the Academic Developer Program introduced by Microsoft in September 2002.

The technology center will function as a one-stop-shop; a research lab for faculty and students, a training center for faculty, and a valuable e-learning resource center for the university. In addition to this, the university is also introducing a four-semester M. Tech. program in .NET technologies, developed in collaboration with Microsoft. The program will start in the next academic year, and will be available to students in 118 VTU affiliated colleges across the state.

The center will include hardware and software support and will impart training to faculty and students on topics including .NET. Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) can also avail the facilities of the center to test their applications.

Commenting on the alliance, Governor of Karnataka and Chancellor of VTU TN Chaturvedi said, "In line with our mission to become an outstanding university by producing world class engineers, we strive to offer our students and faculty with cutting edge technology in step with the global advancements. We realize that the next computing wave will be that of web services. This partnership will help students and aspiring developers leverage the immense opportunity in building web service based applications."

Elaborating on the benefits of the center, Microsoft India developer and platform evangelism director Sheila Gulati said, "With this investment, we hope to empower over 1,40,000 students with the skills, tools and resources required to develop next generation applications using web services".