According to China Daily, the system was developed by its joint venture with China Electronics Technology Group Corp, a State-owned company. The Chinese version comes with tailor-made security features, and is expected to open up the market to the US tech giant.
“We have already developed the first version of the Windows 10 government secure system. It has been tested by three large enterprise customers,” Crozier said in an exclusive interview with China Daily. “We have worked extensively to make it secure and controllable. We are now ready to serve the market,” he added.
China’s government cited Edward Snowden’s revelation of the massive surveillance program by the US, causing concerns regarding information security, making the market close to Windows 10.
Microsoft set up a joint venture with CETC in 2015, in the hope of re-entering the market with a government-customized version. The joint venture, known as C&M Information Technologies, became operational in September 2016.
Xiang Ligang, an IT expert and CEO of the telecom industry website cctime.com, said China has been a large growth driver for global IT spending in the past several years, and the government spending on IT infrastructure accounts for a big portion of that.
“China’s commercial PC market (computers used by corporates rather than individual consumers) is expected to revive growth this year,” Xiang said. “Once the tailor-made system is adopted by government agencies, private enterprises are highly likely to follow suit.”
Crozier also said that the US tech giant was seeing robust growth in its cloud business in China, as local enterprises are embracing new technologies to boost productivity.
Currently, it has more than 70,000 corporate customers for its Azure cloud services in China, up from 65,000 roughly a year ago. The cloud usage by these customers, both the time spent on cloud and applications moved to cloud, is increasing 80 to 100 percent annually.
“Enterprises that deployed cloud solutions three or four years ago are aggressively increasing their bets on the technology,” he said.
