Microsoft finalizing partnerships to provide technical, sales support to 25 software start-ups Microsoft plans to give a helping hand to French start-ups that want to develop software using its technology. The company is finalizing partnerships with 15 European venture capital firms to provide technical, sales and marketing support to 25 software start-ups in which they have invested, it announced Monday.The venture capital firms are looking to Microsoft to support the software firms in which they have invested, to make them better-known in France and abroad, it said.On Monday afternoon, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates is scheduled to discuss the future of software innovation in France with French IT executives at an event hosted by the French Minister of Industry, François Loos. Bernard Charlès, Chief Executive Officer of French software developer Dassault Systèmes, will also speak. Microsoft and Dassault struck a partnership last November to incorporate Microsoft’s collaborative working tools into Dassault’s product lifecycle management system. France has a host of innovative small software developers, many of them — like the ObjectWeb consortium — developing open source projects with subsidies from government research agencies. There are also bigger developers in France that are well-known in their respective markets, such as Business Objects SA, Dassault and Ilog SA, but they tend not to span the industry in the way that Microsoft, SAP AG or Oracle Corp. do. Other French entrepreneurs such as Marc Fleury of JBoss Inc. have sought fame and fortune abroad, more often setting up their businesses in the U.S. to tap that country’s larger market.Through a technology center in Paris, Microsoft plans to help developers in France test their applications in different hardware and software environments, and will give them access to other technical resources to speed up their work. In addition, it will promote their activities through its own marketing events, it said Monday.The start-ups will also be encouraged to support one another, through a private newsgroup moderated by engineers from Microsoft’s French software support group. Microsoft has already identified eight start-ups which will benefit from the project: Aliantiz SARL, Excentive, Lexifi SAS, Prim’X Technologies SA, Reportive, Soorce SA, Total Immersion SA and Voluntis SA. The other 17 will be selected from the investments of the venture-capital partners.Two-year-old Aliantiz has two products: telephony software for converged cell-phone and wireless-LAN devices, and an audience tracking tool for Web portals built on Microsoft’s .Net platform. Excentive develops payroll tools for managing commissions and other incentive payments for sales staff and others. Lexifi’s software allows financial institutions to represent financial contracts in computer-readable formats, and works with the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) and with Microsoft Research. Prim’X Technologies provides encryption and access control for corporate data stored on removable media. Reportive develops sales performance management software. Soorce builds collaborative product lifecycle management (PLM) tools. Total Immersion sells “augmented reality” software which can overlay realistic three-dimensional computer-generated images on top of video, useful in automotive and industrial design, and Voluntis develops software for automating patient record keeping for medical practitioners and health insurance companies. Software DevelopmentTechnology Industry