MIDC to increase Microsoft's mobile devices' development work

The Microsoft India Development Centre (MIDC) at Hyderabad will soon be doing a large portion of development work for Microsoft's developer and platform offerings for mobile devices.

This includes Windows 5.0, and Visual Studio for mobile devices which basically enables creation of applications for web-based services in mobile devices. At present, around 10 per cent of the development work for Windows Mobile 5.0 is being done from MIDC.

Visual Studio.NET is Microsoft's suite of software development tools that includes Visual Basic, Visual C++ etc. It caters to the .NET platform which is a combination of web-based programming technologies and Windows, supporting database connectivity and memory management for handheld and wireless devices.

Therefore, by using Visual Studio.NET, applications for devices that run Windows Mobile or Windows CE including PocketPCs and SmartPhones can be created.

Speaking to Business Standard, Bibhu Choudhary, programme manager at MIDC, said, "We are expanding into developing web-based services in mobile devices that may include applications that can be used by a mobile traveller. This can range from getting information on currency to weather at any place across the world."

At present, MIDC has a team of 80 people working on Windows Mobile and other related software, such as applications for mobile devices.

Currently, most of this work is being done out of Redmond in the US. But by the end of the next year, the centre expects to have a significant percentage of development work with regard to these services in India.

Although this will involve hiring more number of people for application development, Sheila Gulati, director, developer and platform evangelism at Microsoft, said, "We are continuously recruiting people but it is difficult to give a break-up in terms of individual teams."

Gulati was here for the Microsoft TechEd 2005 that is basically an IT event for developers, server professionals and architects. Globally, Microsoft has been organising these events since nine years.

Hyderabad is the fourth city in this month in India to host this event, after Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai. Incidentally, this is the first time ever that this event is being organised in Hyderabad.

TechEd 2005 is a platform aimed at providing insights in key areas like developer tools, systems infrastructure, databases, mobility and embedded systems and architecture.