TertAm Microsoft Corporation opened its innovation center in Yerevan on Wednesday.
The official opening ceremony organized at the State Engineering University was attended by Minister of Economy Tigran Davtyan, Minister of Education and Science Armen Ashotyan, US Ambassador to Armenia Marie Yovanovich and Microsoft Yerevan Office Director Grigor Barseghyan.
The company's representatives introduced the center's activities.
"This is a very happy day for us, and we have been looking forward to this momeent for more than four year," Barseghyan said in his opening speech.
He said the center will assist in all innovative projects in IT sector.
"Microsoft will fully support all innovations, promoting cooperation among state, private, public and international organizations," he said.
The minister of economy said the government keeps the IT sector in its spotlight as it finds the IT industries can have a direct impact on the country's economy.
"The government makes continuous efforts to support the sector," he said.
In her speech, Ambassador Marie Yovanovich said that information technologies are among Armenia's most successful and most rapidly developing industries, which is mostly due to highly qualfied human resources in the sector.
Minister Armen Ashotyan noted for his part that the Microsoft has only licensed software and products, and Armenia's educational institutions use its licensed products.
Equipped with up-to-date technologies, the new center aims to promote innovation in Armenia, revealing new ideas and proposing IT solutions for different sectors of the economy.
"The center will support the best ideas that can help create a new product which would have a demand on both the domestic and international markets. It will implement short- and long-term programs to give students and specialists new skills and knowledge for bringing their ideas to life," a company's representative said.
At the end of the ceremony, Microsof Array company signed a memorandum of understanding with the US Agency of International Development (USAID) and the Enterprise Incubator Foundation
