During a meeting with Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft on 25 May 2010, MITI Minister agreed to explore the formation of a Joint Task Force to complement ongoing efforts to increase the level of technology adoption among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia.“I am pleased that Mr. Ballmer and Microsoft have taken this initiative to work with us. I believe that this joint task force will serve as an important component of our broader efforts to improve Malaysia’s productivity and competitiveness in order to improve the standard of living for all Malaysians.” Said YB Dato’ Sri Mustapa Mohamed.

The scope of the Joint Task Force will include training programmes and outreach activities, among others. One of the focal points of the Task Force will be to create a conducive environment in Malaysia for spreading cloud computing - a technology that makes business computing capabilities available to usersat minimal upfront costs over the Internet. SMEs adopting cloud computing should be able to decrease their capital expenditures, as they will only have to pay for what they use.

SME Corp, which is Malaysia’s central coordinating agency for SMEs, will serve as the conduit for training purposes.