By Victoria Ho
Thursday, April 10 2008 07:58 PM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62040062,00.htm

SINGAPORE--Microsoft on Thursday launched a program to give schools in Singapore free access to some of its developer tools.

Termed Microsoft DreamSpark, the global campaign started its Southeast Asian roll out in Singapore with two universities--the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University.

Microsoft hopes to spread the program's outreach across some 120,000 tertiary students in the country this year.

The second phase, which will come in the next half of 2008 will touch other tertiary institutions such as Singapore Management University, Singapore Polytechnic, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Temasek Polytechnic, Nanyang Polytechnic and Republic Polytechnic.

Eventually, Microsoft says, it expects to extend the program to younger students in all the schools covered by Singapore's Ministry of Education next year.

DreamSpark started in February in the United States, and has also been introduced in China.

The students will gain access to developer tools such as Visual Studio, XNA Game Studio, Expression Studio and platform tools SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Windows Server Standard Edition.

Joseph Philip Mullinix, deputy president of administration at the National University of Singapore (NUS), spoke at the launch event about the school's goal to expose its students to global innovation.

Mullinix said: "NUS' vision is to be a globally-oriented university...our talented students are given vast opportunities to intern with the best companies around the world. Some of them are in Silicon Valley, California, interning with IT startups as part of the NUS Overseas Colleges program."

Mullinix raised an example of such a "global" connection through the video games industry--the Singapore MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, a joint research project with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Boston.

Singapore has been investing in efforts to build talent to fuel its games industry. The government in 2006 announced plans to pour S$500 million (US$325.7 million) over the next five years into research and development activities in interactive and digital media (IDM).