Microsoft to launch Surface in Oz next week

Microsoft to make Surface offically available in Australia.

ANZ app on the Microsoft Surface.	ANZ tennis app for use in January in the Bank's Melbourne headquarters during the Australian Open.	Lonely Planet app on display at Microsoft's Sydney office during Tuesday's launch.
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nsquared solutions, a Sydney-based technology company and strategic Microsoft partner will be one of the first in the channel to sell Microsoft's Surface to the Australian market when it officially launches here on Tuesday.

The news comes off the back of Microsoft's announcement yesterday that Tracey Fellows, managing director for Microsoft Australia and Robbie Bach, president of the entertainment division for Microsoft Surface will launch the the multi-touch, multi-user device in Sydney on Tuesday.

While Amnesia, a Sydney-based digital marketing agency owned by US-based Razorfish received first shipments of the device from its US office back in 2008, an official local launch hadn't been set, until now. 

nsquared, a software company for emerging technologies, has been developing Surface apps and supplying customer units to European countries in the past  year. With the local launch imminent, it is "pushing hard to open up the [local] market and get Surface moving," Kristen Kosmala, performance coach for nsquared told CRN.

Surface units will be sold through partners for their individual customer needs, said Kosmala. At the moment, nsquared is "pretty much the link through Microsoft for the public and commercial sector [in Australia], but there's nothing stopping other [partners] that are using Microsoft products to learn how to develop Surface [apps]."

She said nsquared customises the system so that it works best for its customers' and their context. "You don't actually buy something off the shelf, whatever [users] do is set up for the environment and for [their] business goals.

"You probably could set Surface up for apps such as Outlook but that defeats the purpose" said Kosmala. "It's set up as a collaborative community multi-user experience. If you want single user experience you can go to a vertical screen and keyboard which is perfect for that."

"The app that we've designed is for lower Kindergarten to Year 12 students [around] literacy and numeracy type skills," said Kosmala. "The table allows for collaboration, that's probably the biggest paradigm shift because it allows a group of people to interact and work together. You can also have competitive [apps] so we've got some games mostly for teaching numeracy and literacy.

Surface was first used in April 2008 in the US by telecommunications company AT&T for use in retail stores across North America.