As I write this post I’m about to depart China after a week of travelling through three cities and visiting with dozens of customers and partners and also locally based colleagues. While I was here our Beijing office announced a plan to work with the government of the city of Hangzhou to reduce piracy while Microsoft works to support increased developement of Internet new applications and business models for cloud computing in that city. We also announced a second technology center and additional support for existing efforts.

While Hangzhou is a special city because it its the home of Alibaba.com, one of China’s largest internet search providers, our team also announced our hope that we could work to develop similar activites elsewhere. See the Wall Street Journal’s report here.

I think this kind of work is essential to increasing awareness among customers and users of Microsoft products in countries that have relatively high piracy rates. I believe our focus on education and awareness have been central to the progress we’ve made over the last few years.

-Alex