IN THE PHILIPPINES
Microsoft: more open source projects
By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 18:53:00 12/04/2008
Filed Under: Software, Computing & Information Technology
MAKATI CITY, Philippines -- Microsoft Philippines is looking to pursue more collaboration with open source developers in the country through its Open Source Interoperability Lab project.
The current Open Source Interoperability Lab is housed in the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) office at the University of the Philippines Diliman in Quezon City.
As part of this increasing collaboration with the open source community, Microsoft Philippines has inked a partnership with open source software engineering firm Exist Global headed by Winston Damarillo.
The partnership will lead to development of plugins for NPanday (www.codeplex.com/npanday), a project to integrate the Java-based Apache Maven with Microsoft's .NET development environments.
Exist Global will also work with Microsoft in developing the "open source" .NET project called NFixture (www.codeplex.com/nfixture), which is primarily for database data integrity and testing.
Exist Global, which has tapped into Microsoft's Open Source Interoperability Lab, is the second company that has inked a partnership with Microsoft.
The first was local firm D3 Systems, which signed up three months ago.
Albert Dela Cruz, Microsoft Philippines Platform Strategy Manager, said these recent partnerships were borne out of discussions between Microsoft and the open source developers during an Open Source Summit in Cebu. These discussions have led them to work on collaborative software development projects, he added.
Damarillo said the partnership would allow open source developers to create industry applications that can be integrated into Microsoft infrastructures.
He said many companies in the Philippines still prefer to have heterogeneous software environments, which means having both open source and proprietary software applications working in one environment.
"Our work with Microsoft fosters collaboration and innovation on existing platforms, which helps customers become better as they get flexibility with their software environments," Damarillo said.
Apart from the Open Source Interoperability Lab in CICT, Microsoft Philippines Managing Director Rafael Rollan said the local software subsidiary is building a second lab also located in the UP Diliman campus.
The second lab is expected to open early next year and will be open to students.
"We want to expose students to different software technologies. That way, they can make applications based on specific industry needs," Rollan said.
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