Software To Benefit The Whole World
By Shaun Parker on Nov 18, 2008 in Information Technology | comments(0)
Custom software is an on-going development. As new research is developed, more opportunities for customising it come to the fore and more companies are able to benefit. The idea of custom software is to make business that much easier and quicker, thus cutting back on wasted staff hours, even with the possibility of scaling down work force.
Any method that helps to keep a company going through the current credit crisis will help and while nobody wants to see jobs lost, we also don’t want to see companies disappearing leaving only the big players to charge exactly what they want for products and services.
Custom software can be tailored to a particular industry, the way it works, the staff it employs and can be used for many different purposes from salary to personnel issues, from sales to stock control.
Of course, Microsoft are the biggest world players when it comes to custom software and they have the funds to put into the scientific research that means all other software builders and users get to take full advantage of.
The latest moves by Microsoft mean that custom software is being developed that will be able to recognise human speech and handwriting. This follows a decade of research and hard work. It will have huge implications for businesses and staff alike. Voice recognition software would vastly open up work opportunities for the less able-bodied employee and handwriting recognition would save written documents having to be re-programmed into computers. This will save immeasurable amounts of time for companies and time is money.
Much of the custom software developments are coming out of Beijing. Chinese talent in the arena of computer technologies is growing faster than any other country and Microsoft are tapping into this pool of knowledge with their Beijing branch that employs 350 researchers and has, to date, produced 260 innovative ideas that have brought in world-wide sales.
It is expected that the Beijing department will be responsible for developing custom software specifically for business-oriented products and also, hopefully, for software that will service the health care sector.
Normally relying on staff that have been trained by Western researchers, Microsoft now say that Chinese Universities are producing graduates of such a high quality that Western training is virtually no longer needed.
China are becoming famous for the level of teaching engineering, science and technology to children from a very young age and it seems that many of them are grasping the knowledge with open arms.
IT used to be considered the domain of the Western world but given the opportunity, it is possible for people the world over to be able to concentrate their efforts and research so that we can all benefit from custom software, whether it be the local business at the end of the road being able to source and supply your much needed products or your doctor having new treatments and drug research at his fingertips.
It’s good to see that research continues, that we are all able to gain something from it and it’s not just a way for big business to get ever bigger. A way of making life simpler, of better communication and better sharing of resources and research can only be a good thing.
