The tiny African island nation of Mauritius stands out for being the top adopter of technology on the continent.

According to the the World Economic Forum’s ‘Networked Readiness Index’ released earlier this year, Mauritius ranked 55 out of 144 countries in terms of its “capacity to exploit the opportunities offered by the digital age.”

Mauritius then is a key market in Africa’s technology ecosystem and it is no surprise that tech giant Microsoft is heading up its Indian Ocean and French Pacific operations from the country.

Paul Bunting, general manager of Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands and French Pacific, has spoken to ITWeb Africa about the importance of Mauritius to his company’s operations as well as how his firm is trying to fight software piracy in the island nation.

GARETH VAN ZYL: What services are hot-sellers for Microsoft in Mauritius?

PAUL BUNTING: Mauritius has a very diversified economy where services like Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and financial services are major contributors to the GDP. This means that all our solutions and services that are relevant to these industries are hot-sellers in the country. These include all our productivity tools, unified communications and private cloud solutions.

We therefore see an important opportunity for our Office 365 services which will be launched for SMBs and enterprises in a few weeks’ time. Through Office 365 we are enabling our customers to focus more on their core income-generating activities and less on IT issues.

GARETH VAN ZYL: Can you provide us with a figure on what your revenues are in Mauritius?

PAUL BUNTING: Our office in Mauritius is Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands and French Pacific. We represent Microsoft in Mauritius and 8 other territories: Madagascar, Reunion Island, Seychelles, Comoros, Mayotte, Djibouti, French Polynesia and New Caledonia. Mauritius is a very important market in our region and represents nearly one third of our annual revenues, most of which comes from sales to large accounts.

GARETH VAN ZYL: Regarding piracy of software, how big of a problem is it in Mauritius and how does it affect your business in that country?

PAUL BUNTING: Mauritius has made substantial progress in the fight against piracy.

In 1997, the Government of Mauritius introduced the Copyright Act which protects intellectual property rights. This piece of legislation is key for a number of industries such as software, textile, music, cinema, and pharmaceuticals where innovation and creativity is a critical success factor. The introduction of this law has led to a number of multinationals entering the Mauritian market and has contributed significantly to driving a healthy business ecosystem.

This is substantiated by annual studies on software piracy from the Business Software Alliance. According to the study the software piracy rate in Mauritius was 90% in 1994 and 78% in 1998 respectively. The Mauritian government and the Mauritius Police Force have tackled this issue in collaboration with software companies and key industry players in other verticals. This has resulted in the software piracy rate being reduced to around 57% (BSA, 2011). While this shows very good progress, the Mauritian government and private sector must continue to work together to further reduce piracy levels.

GARETH VAN ZYL: What has Microsoft then done in Mauritius to drive down piracy rates?

PAUL BUNTING: Microsoft has invested heavily in driving down piracy rates will continuously educating the consumer on how to recognise and avoid counterfeit software. To address the increasing sophistication of software counterfeiters, Microsoft focuses its efforts on three fronts:

· Education - Microsoft is raising awareness among customers and resellers about the serious risks of counterfeit software
· Engineering - Microsoft is continuing to invest in forensic technologies and anti-counterfeiting product features
· Enforcement - Microsoft actively supports government officials and law enforcement agencies in taking action against software counterfeiters

The key success factor here has been our partnerships with other software vendors, various governmental and non-governmental organisations, our distributors and resellers and the media.

We have run a number of highly successful educational campaigns in Mauritius to drive awareness of the risk associated with counterfeit software. This has also led to a number of counterfeiters being bust and sued for selling counterfeit products. Resellers are also becoming increasingly conscious about the benefits of being genuine resellers. This education drive has led to a number of customers being more acutely aware of what to look out for in ensuring they buy a genuine Windows OS or contact Microsoft they have realised they had counterfeit software on their PCs and wanted to legalise it.

GARETH VAN ZYL: How key is Mauritius as a technology market in Africa for businesses like Microsoft do you think?

PAUL BUNTING: We have seen an increase in multinationals focusing on Africa and in that context Mauritius is positioning itself as a platform for investment on the continent. We are already seeing Mauritian companies investing on the continent and we are seeing investors from Asia and Europe using Mauritius as an entry point into the African market. We are seeing an increase in the number of international players entering our market across various verticals and the technology market is no different with a number of our partners opening offices on the continent or offering their services to clients there.

Mauritius in itself is known for its economic success, political stability and business friendly environment. It also has good broadband and mobile network coverage, a cyber-city and an ICT industry which is the third biggest contributor to the country’s GDP. Its relatively small size makes the deployment of technologies easier.

The Mauritian government is working very hard to position the country as a role model for the region. In fact Microsoft and its partners have worked very closely with the government to elaborate its E-government strategy. Its government portal runs on SharePoint technology to deliver e-government services to the citizens. They are also setting up the G-cloud (Government cloud) which will be running on our latest technologies.