Microsoft allows cafés to offer online trainings

By Ehda M. Dagooc - PhilStar

Internet Cafes will soon be able to provide training services to its clients, as Microsoft Philippines is moving up to allow these entities as authorized mini-training center to provide accessible basic IT education skills to the masses.

Microsoft Philippines managing director Rafael Rollan announced that this program will soon be started in Cebu, and in other areas in Southern Philippines, to help Internet Cafes in the region boost their consumer traffic and offer sensible services, other than games and net browsing.

“Any consumer can go to an Internet Café and get trained on different Microsoft products,” Rollan said explaining that the company is going to build an online network access to authorized net café to accept consumers interested on online training.

“This is a computer based and online training. Internet Cafes will provide the dedicated PCs for this purpose,” he said.

This program will provide Internet Cafes another revenue channel, while any individual, regardless of age, can get easy training access to different Microsoft programs.

This concept will be presented by Microsoft to the Cebu Provincial government soon, as well as Local Government Units (LGUs).

“This is something we want to explore with the Provincial government here, to introduce IT education through iCafes. This is another form of learning access,” Rollan said.

Next year, this unique program will be aggressively pursued by Microsoft, starting with several presentations to Internet Café owners and key government officials in different areas in the region.

“We use iCafes as one of the channels to push our program ‘bridging digital divide’, offering easier eLearning access to Cebuanos and the rest of Southern Philippine markets,” he said in an interview in his recent visit to Cebu.

According to Rollan, with Microsoft’s way of partnering with the government in this concept, he hopes that more and more Internet Cafes will be interested in this new business concept, becoming a non-formal educational training center arm for Microsoft.

Last year, Microsoft presented different concept of business opportunity for Internet Café owners, this is on the possibility of converting Internet Cafes as call centers during night.

There are over 2,000 registered Internet Cafes in Visayas and Mindanao. In Cebu, there are 600 net cafes, this number is still growing.

Microsoft had been working closely with the Internet Café owners in the Visayas and Mindanao in different programs, such as offering different revenue generating opportunities.

Meanwhile, the company is on its continued advocacy to encourage Internet Café operators to use licensed software installed in each of the computer terminal.