Last week, Microsoft Malta announced the most recent evolution in the approach of interoperability. The interoperability principles were explained during a series of presentations by Microsoft officials that were held at The Business Centre, Malta Hilton, Portomaso.

The conference aimed at creating additional choices for customers and fostering new opportunities for business growth in the IT industry in Malta.

During his welcoming address, Enterprise Account Manager Nick Tonna said that interoperability across applications and services has become a key requirement in business. “All our enterprise business products are interoperable by design and follow industry standards and specifications to make it easy for customers to use them in conjunction with other technologies. These products include Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework) Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and Officer SharePoint Server 2007, as well as future versions of these products.”

Wilfried Grommen, Microsoft CEE General Manager and Regional Technology Officer, was the keynote speaker. He presented the concept of interoperability frameworks and how these align with Microsoft’s interoperability principles. He also discussed some of the latest innovations in the field of interoperability developed by Microsoft. As part of the event, the participants took part in a round table discussion on the European Interoperability framework, which was facilitated by Mr Grommen.

Microsoft Malta Solution Specialist Alan Attard explained the concepts of portal-to-portal interoperability, while Joseph Seychell, of Microsoft Consulting Services, gave a presentation on identity and access optimisation.

Malta Information Technology Agency chief enterprise architect Godwin Caruana gave an overview of the European Interoperability framework and how this was being implemented by the Maltese government.