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Microsoft has launched its Office Professional 2007 prepaid edition in India. The office productivity suite of the software major is meant for both home and small businesses.

They can subscribe to it for six months by paying Rs.1499 and can renew it after that through prepaid cards. This would enable small businesses to use the office productivity suite without huge investment. It also enables home users and students to make use of the software only when they need it.

Microsoft has also introduced the prepaid edition in other emerging markets including South Africa where it has been a success.

Software major Microsoft has come out in vigorous defence of desktop application software saying that preponderance of web-based services would not kill it.

Microsoft is the mojor seller of desktop operating systems and application software in the world and has just stepped onto the terrain of web-based services. It is now promoting itself as a company which can do both.

Mr.Jeff Raikes, President of Microsoft business applications division, pooh-poohed theories floated by web majors that software was dying. He said that some of their competitors liked to espouse that idea.

Mr.Raikes said that he thought that they were worried that actually people like a lot of what they had at their fingertips. He said that real success was ti user a combination.

Microsoft is facing tough competition from Google, whose web apps are getting very popular.

Microsoft Corporation India Pvt Ltd announced the launch of Microsoft Innovation Framework at its third ‘India in Innovation’ summit in Bangalore.

The innovation involves a number of investments designed to increase innovation “for India, from India”. Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Microsoft India, said that piracy rates being high, it was challenging to develop a business model for innovation.

Elaborating on local language computing being a barrier to IT penetration in the country, he said that the company’s ‘Bhasha’ and ‘Shiksha’ projects have been helping to increase PC use among students.

He added that the SMB sector was a big opportunity. Consumer space and the public sector would be the next big wave of opportunity, he added. Tarun Gulati, General Manager, Developer and Platform Evangelism at Microsoft, said that the Microsoft Innovation Framework would consist of four investments.

He said that the Innovation Triangle Park would focus on skills and intellectual capital, industry partnerships and incubation for software companies. He added that the first of several Microsoft Innovation Centres would come up in Pune by the first quarter of the next financial year. The company would also work in partnership with the College of Engineering, Pune and Symbiosis International University to accelerate their partnership with Microsoft.

Gulati said that this programme exists in other countries and is being launched in India now. He said that they are yet to identify start-ups for the programme. The focus would be on students and will be in partnership with the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM-A.

About 15,000 students are expected to participate this year, Gulati added. Srini Koppolu, Corporate Vice-President and MD of Microsoft India Development Centre said that products for the world were being developed at the centre at Hyderabad.