IT Person of the Month

Vahe Torosyan

On October 12 of 2015 Vice President of Microsoft Vahe Torosyan created in Armenia office of the company and “Microsoft” innovation center in Yerevan thus making his personal contribution in the development of Armenian IT sector pursuing the intention to turn the Republic into a global center of information technologies. “Microsoft” Vice President spoke with satisfaction about the recent year’s dynamic development of IT sector in Armenia, considering the success as impressive, which, according to him, creates new opportunities for the implementation of new initiatives.

Vahé Torossian is the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Worldwide Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partners (SMS&P) organization. Working across Microsoft's business groups, SMS&P drives sales and marketing efforts and provides comprehensive solutions for small to medium-sized businesses and corporate accounts (including some public sector customers).

SMS&P also oversees Microsoft’s worldwide partner group, driving the company's channel partner strategy, supporting the Microsoft Partner Network (comprised of 640,000 partners), and creating solutions to help customers meet their business needs. In addition, SMS&P includes three more groups: Hosting (driving Cloud services for hosting partners), Anti-piracy (prevent piracy and protect intellectual property) and Business Excellence (telesales, sales excellence and strategy).

A 21-year Microsoft veteran, Torossian was most recently the area vice president of Microsoft's Central and Eastern European (CEE) region and vice president Microsoft International, where he oversaw 26 subsidiaries serving 32 countries, leading one of Microsoft's fastest-growing regions and helping to steer the company's activities in EMEA as a member of the regional leadership team.

Prior to his leadership role for Microsoft CEE, Torossian served as general manager of Microsoft's SMS&P organization in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region for three years. During his tenure in Singapore, the APAC region experienced unprecedented growth and development, and Torossian gained a wealth of experience working with emerging markets including India, China and Southeast Asia. He also successfully led the integration of different product lines and businesses within Microsoft.

Torossian joined Microsoft in 1992 to create the channel marketing organization for Microsoft France. Subsequently, he led numerous business divisions and initiatives in France, and was named deputy general manager of the French subsidiary.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Torossian held both business and consumer sales and marketing management positions with Texas Instruments Inc.

Barcelona

Albeit with a slight delay, we are presenting to your attention a new issue of our ‘IT Person of the Month’ newsletter. This time in February 2014, our company decided to provide coverage not on a single person, but on the entire city. Yes, that is exactly what we did: we unanimously decided that the status of the ‘IT person’ (in the broadest sense of the word) and a global event in the world of information technologies is deservedly earned by the capital of Catalonia, the amazingly beautiful and ultramodern city of Barcelona.

In the spring of 2014, the second largest city in Spain once again welcomed the participants and attendees of the GSMA Mobile World Congress, opening the doors of the grand Fira de Barcelona Gran Via exhibition center to more than 90 thousand visitors from 201 countries representing around 2 thousand IT companies from all over the world. This record indicator for the mobile industry events exceeds the number of participants in MWC 2013 by 18%.

The multiple conference sessions were attended by the founder and president of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, president of IBM Virginia Rommeti as well as by the presidents and CEOs of such companies as Alcatel-Lucent, América Móvil, Bitcoin Foundation, Cisco, Citigroup, Connecthings, EMC Corporation, Etisalat Group, Ford Motor Company, Isis, Jasper Wireless, Kakao Corp., KDDI, Lookout, Millicom, NTT DOCOMO, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Shazam Entertainment, Shhmooze, SingTel, SK Planet, Tele2 Group, Viacom International Media Networks, and WhatsApp.

For reference, the GSMA Mobile World Congress has annually been held by GSMA since 1994. For about ten years, the event was held in the French City of Cannes. In 2013, it moved to Barcelona and was hosted at the world-class venue - Fira de Barcelona Gran Via exhibition center. This allowed greatly expanding the exhibition area, where the manufacturers and operators showcased the most recent achievements in the fields of information technologies, equipment, and communication. For the past 20 years, the Congress has become the largest event in the industry.

In 2014, Barcelona once again provided an opportunity for various major IT technology developers to share their latest inventions and achievements. Thus, during the exhibition, the participants showcased the most innovative watch, the best sports gadgets and devices, the most ‘whale’ gadgets and devices, and even the cheapest smartphone. As anticipated, the greatest number of attendees gathered at the stands of the companies that presented innovative software for the gadgets.

Those of you who are interest to learn more about the GSMA Mobile World Congress can visit its official website at GSMA Mobile World Congress.

Bill Gates

Our newsletter does not set out or aim at enumerating the merits of the coryphaeus in the field of information technologies, the founder of Microsoft Bill Gates. And we are not surprised by his impressive financial success (according to BloombergBillionaires Index, Bill Gates was once again ranked as the world's richest person in 2013). Everyone pays tribute to the creativity and inimitability of his thinking. This is all attested to with the vigorous sales of Microsoft software all over the world as well as broad extents of his social and charitable undertakings.

Our choice of this person was stipulated by his recent stunning announcement that ‘…in 20 years, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world’. The was declared on 22 January 2014 by the founder of Microsoft Bill Gates, whose fortune is estimated at $72 bln (first place in the Forbes list of the wealthiest people) in his annual letter on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates’s annual letter was titled ‘Three Myths that Block Progress for the Poor’. ‘Poor countries are not doomed to eternal poverty. Some of the so-called developing countries have already developed. Many are on their way to this ... I am optimistic enough about this that I am willing to make a prediction. By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. To put it in other words, I mean that virtually no one country (even taking into account inflation) will be as poor as those of the 35 states that currently the World Bank classifies as low-income countries’, is said in the document.

He believes that poor countries will learn from their most productive neighbors and benefit from innovations in the fields of medicine, agriculture, and information technologies. And what is more essential, labor forces, buoyed by expanded education, will attract new investments.

Those of you who are interested to learn more about Bill Gates can visit the official Microsoft website or download his biography at wikipedia.org