Mark Lyn­der­say

"Cloud first, mo­bile first," Bar­ry Ridg­way says em­phat­i­cal­ly when I ask what Mi­crosoft's pri­or­i­ty strat­e­gy is in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.

"It's the mis­sion that Satya Nadel­la has out­lined, and it's our pri­ma­ry strat­e­gy in the re­gion."

Ridg­way is new to the role of vice-pres­i­dent of the sales, mar­ket­ing and ser­vices group of Mi­crosoft Latin Amer­i­ca, but he's no novice at the com­pa­ny.

He's an 18-year vet­er­an at Mi­crosoft and has tak­en his first year to prop­er­ly un­der­stand the mar­kets now un­der his care.

Last week Ridg­way made his first vis­it to T&T af­ter an ear­li­er trip was post­poned and his first mis­sion was to be present at the sign­ing of a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MoU) be­tween Mi­crosoft and its com­mu­ni­ty part­ner Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) for the es­tab­lish­ment of Mi­crosoft's first In­no­va­tion Cen­tre in the Caribbean.

Mi­crosoft has es­tab­lished 110 cen­tres in 80 coun­tries through­out the world, 20 of which are in Latin Amer­i­ca. This is the first cen­tre to be es­tab­lished in the Caribbean re­gion. The In­no­va­tion Cen­tre, sched­uled for open­ing in Au­gust 2014, will of­fer ca­pac­i­ty build­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to the whole Caribbean re­gion.

"Latin Amer­i­ca is a big growth en­gine for Mi­crosoft," says Ridg­way, "and T&T is one of our biggest mar­kets and a gate­way for us to the South­ern Caribbean."

"Mi­crosoft needs a strong hub to build part­ners who do well in T&T and in the re­gion. We def­i­nite­ly see T&T as a plat­form for ex­pand­ing our pres­ence in the re­gion."

?