Microsoft launches software tutorials

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Tamer Özmen General Manager of Microsoft Turkey says the Open Academy is open to young entrepreneurs and housewives. Hürriyet photo

Microsoft Turkey has launched an online tutorial providing interactive courses in software writing free of charge, aiming to reach young Turkish entrepreneurs in information technology, said the top executive of Microsoft’s local branch yesterday.

“Open Academy will be open to everyone from housewives to young passionate entrepreneurs in Turkey,” said Tamer Özmen, general manager of Microsoft Turkey, at a press meeting in Istanbul.

“More people could learn how to write software and create new applications through the tutorials,” he said, adding that Turkey was a promising country in software production capacity thanks to its young population with an average age of 27.

The application sector has reached a business volume of nearly $17.5 billion globally and could reach $60 billion in a few years, said Özmen.

Turkey dedicated to R&D
“Turkey has increased the share of research and development spending from 0.04 percent to 0.08 percent in the last eight years,” said Turkey’s Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım while addressing participants at the event. “Turkey will continue to train young entrepreneurs with unique ideas in software development and creating applications.”

The minister also said Turkey’s Transportation Ministry is “dedicated to implementing the Fatih Project,” which proposes “smart classes” for 600,000 schools and tablet computers for 17 million students in the country. He said the project would cost nearly 6 billion Turkish Liras. The minister said possible candidate firms willing to take part in the Fatih Project’s tender to manufacture tablets and smart boards for the classrooms would be supported through various incentives.

“We view this project as a pioneering attempt to start manufacturing a local tablet with mostly Turkish components,” Yıldırım added.