New | Microsoft expands its mobile and cloud services push in Hong Kong

Software giant Microsoft is plotting to make strategic new investments in Hong Kong as it marks 25 years of doing business in the city this month.

These initiatives would support the way organisations in Hong Kong pursue their so-called digital transformation, a process that Microsoft has also undertaken over the past few years, senior executives told the South China Morning Post.

“We have moved to become a cloud-first and mobile-first company,” Microsoft Greater China chairman and chief executive Ralph Haupter said, referring to the company’s adoption of technologies that it used to compete against.

“Many companies are asking how we can help them on their own transformation [to become more efficient] and which solutions to use,” he said.

That has led United States-based Microsoft to open a new office at Cyberport this week that promotes increased collaboration between its staff, as well as with corporate customers and partners.

Further investments will likely be made in strengthening Microsoft’s local data centre operations, which currently comprise two facilities that support users of its Azure cloud computing platform.

Cloud computing enables companies to buy, sell, lease or distribute online a range of software and other digital resources as an on-demand service, just like electricity from a power grid. These resources are kept and managed inside internet-linked data centres.