Kazakhstan businessmen to use cloud technologies

Software giant Microsoft and Kazakhstan Internet provider KazakhTelecom have signed a memorandum on cooperation in development of cloud technologies in Kazakhstan, Tengrinews.kz reports. Despite of the fact that the signed memorandum does not have a legal effect, KazakhTelecom's Director General on IT Marat Abdildabekov assured that the companies will sign the contract in the end of summer and will launch cloud services MicrosoftSharePoint and MicrosoftExchange for companies for the first time in Kazakhstan. "This is a big step in development of IT-technologies in Kazakhstan, Director General of the Microsoft Kazakhstan Gunter Dam. As per Dam, launching of the new Internet-services will help small and medium businesses to save money on installation servers, software and payment to IT-experts for maintenance of internal documents turnover in the company. "For example, instead of installing Office and paying for the license to use it on local computers, the user of MicrosoftShare will be able to use the program online and just pay a subscription fee for this service," he told journalists. This will also provide better security of the clients' data, as it will be stored at the company's servers and not on the users' local computers that are often prone to information leaks. The internet traffic spent to use the service will not be charged for by KazakhTelecom, the main local internet provider. It is still unknown what the subscription fee for MicrosoftSharePoint and MicrosoftExchange is going to be for Kazakhstan Internet-users. According to Abdildabekov, KazakhTelecom is currently negotiating the pricing policy with representatives of Microsoft. By Chingiz Dzhumagulov