On the economic impact of microsoft - Belgium

This paper aims at contributing to the literature on the impact of a company on Its country's economy. It first puts forward an analysis of the ICT sector worldwide and the importance of the IT sector In Belgium. Second, It aims at validating a method used to calculate the impact of a company like Microsoft, as regard to the turnover and the employees. The impact of Microsoft Is both direct and indirect. The direct impact comes from its core activity of selling and licensing software. The indirect impact Is the outcome of its Partnership programs with several firms that offer services based on Microsoft's core technology platform. The results show that one euro of sales at Microsoft induces 7.4 euros of sales at its Certified Partners. For each employee of Microsoft, there are about 35 Microsoft-related employees in the Certified Partners companies.