Two and a half months after a partnership agreement was signed on June 26, Italdesign Giugiaro, a leader in services of creativity and engineering for the automotive industry and industrial design, and Microsoft, a world leader in the design and development of information technology solutions, have jointly presented the first prototypes of their cooperation to emphasise the importance of technological innovation in processes of corporate development.

Italdesign Giugiaro and Microsoft strengthened their partnership in the name of Design and Innovation with the intention of taking the utmost advantage of the potential of special software to enable Italdesign Giugiaro to stand out from its competitors on the strength of innovation and technology applied to creativity, to increase productivity of the internal company processes.

"Competitiveness and technological innovation are two concepts that go hand in hand more than ever before," says Pietro Scott Jovane, Managing Director of Microsoft Italia. "The partnership with Italdesign Giugiaro is a great opportunity for Microsoft Italia to bring technological innovation to a key company responsible to a great extent for the special flair that has made the 'Made in Italy' label so highly prized, and for years has been one of the main operators worldwide in offering services of creativity and engineering to industry."

"Our cooperation with Microsoft Italia," explains Fabrizio Giugiaro, Vice Chairman and Style Director of the firm, based in Moncalieri, "is part of the long path mapped out since the foundations of Italdesign Giugiaro: the path toward innovation. In a world that is progressing rapidly in design and technology – like that of the automobile – research and development of new resources and new solutions are essential. We have always believed in information technology, and since back in the Nineties we have been equipped – and we were the first independent research center – with a Virtual Reality Center that has become an integral part of the process of design and engineering; even now we know we have to remain in the front line of technology to stay competitive. This agreement is a new venture along our path that – we are certain – will take us a long way."

Through the partnership, which will develop in different stages, Italdesign Giugiaro can avail itself of an information platform for unified communication and for the management of highly confidential information on both residential and mobile environments. Moreover, it can avail itself of Microsoft Surface, a revolutionary platform sensitive to the normal gestures of the hand and objects placed on the display. With a large horizontal interface of 360 degrees, Microsoft Surface creates a single site in which several users can cooperate simultaneously with physical objects, information and content, communicating with one another in a familiar way, just like they do in the real world. Italdesign Giugiaro, in developing the applications will use Cefriel that, with Microsoft, has developed a Competence Center devoted to Surface.