A major R&D investor in Europe
Microsoft is a significant long-term investor in European R&D, driving new software products and services, inspiring new ways of using efficient information technology solutions and contributing to long-term sustainable growth of our company, our partners, and Europe’s economy and society.
We are working to expand the possibilities for computing every day, investing in ideas and technologies that contribute to solving important socio-economic challenges for governments and business alike.
According to the ‘2010 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard’, Microsoft is the first non-EU-based ICT company to invest R&D in Europe. In 2009 we invested more than €447m in R&D in European countries.
Here are 3 essential domains where we innovate and deliver transformative technology in Europe.
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eGOVERNMENT: We build cloud computing solutions for national or regional government to help deliver cost-effective governmental services to citizens and better value to taxpayers.
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HEALTHCARE: We create online services and tools to reduce costs and help Europeans live healthier and more fulfilling lives through personalised healthcare and better use of patients’ information.
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ENVIRONMENT: We help reduce the environmental impact of businesses and governments through providing software and technology innovations with better energy efficiency.
We invest in research and development across Europe mostly through our research laboratory in Cambridge and several centres such as those in Dublin and Vedbæk, and employ nearly 1,900 R&D staff.
We partner with government, industry and academia, on a broad range of research programmes for instance through our joint research laboratories in Paris, Barcelona and Trento.
We also support and nurture our network of partners which includes over 150,000 European companies in Europe, so the small business sector is more involved and has greater access to technological innovation.
Finally we support the next-generation of researchers, engineers, and users of technology, and thus accelerating “social innovation” by building skills, employability and workforce competitiveness. For instance, we partner with NGOs to provide funding, software, equipment and training on a large scale. Together with Telecentre-Europe, a network of community-based skills training projects, Microsoft helps to promote digital inclusion of the 292 million Europeans.
The public sector aims to address societal challenges and deliver more efficient services at national, regional, and local level in Europe, in a more cost effective way.
As we are working to expand the possibilities for computing every day, we are investing in new technologies and enabling partner solutions and services that can help governments provide vital and technologically advanced services to their citizens and improve cost effectiveness and productivity. The internet and cloud computing make sharing information effortless, and supports the public sector in ensuring an optimal environment for healthcare and education while delivering high quality services to the digitally active citizens.
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Microsoft is working on technology solutions for many key areas of health. We envision a future where patients are in control of their own healthcare, providers have exactly the information they need and can focus on prevention and personalised care.
We align our goals to make sure that we contribute to improving healthcare in Europe through software innovation, and development of new eHealth solutions that can increase efficiency and create new jobs. Our infrastructure products and unified software development tools have facilitated the creation of a thriving network of European partners who develop and support a broad spectrum of healthcare applications to improve the health delivery system.
Improving access to health data is of paramount importance for enabling innovation in healthcare. To address this need we created HealthVault, an Internet-based platform for data storage and sharing, where people can store copies of their health records from various providers.
Microsoft also invests in research programs in the application and development of computational methods and tools for modelling and analysing complex biological systems.
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We collaborate closely with governments, NGOs, businesses and academia across Europe on ways to use technology with the aim to resolve environmental challenges such as climate change and energy efficiency. We also work to rethink business practices and research new environmentally friendly solutions.
For instance, the Microsoft Research laboratory in Cambridge, UK, is playing a key role in our work to help predict and mitigate the rapid changes occurring in the Earth’s life support systems. Another example is a pioneering five-year alliance launched in 2008 with the European Environment Agency known as Eye On Earth to deliver real-time environmental information to more than 600 million Europeans.
We also make sure that Microsoft, as a company, takes the lead in using technology to reduce its own carbon footprint. We meet energy saving requirements for buildings and manufacturing, reduce travelling. We develop environment-friendly data centres that have cut water and energy needs by 95-99%.
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