Microsoft Corporation is going to switch to Russian rubles for settling arrangements with its Russia-based partners, Microsoft Business Development Director in Ural Federal District Andrei Kinash announced at a press meeting in Yekaterinburg.

‘The prices used to be in dollars, which in effect involved a bit of pain for our partners. This was mainly true of the educational establishments and state-run enterprises. Switching to rubles solves the problem,’ he explained.

‘We decided to bear the risks related to the rate of exchange fluctuations and accounted for them by a 10% price variation. The prices will be converted to Russian rubles based on the rate of 31 to 33 RUR to the dollar,’ Kinash said, pointing out that business usually go for a 20% to 30% variation related to rate of exchange fluctuations.

‘We do all our business here through our partners, which is why we pay a lot of attention to their needs. These needs encouraged us to modify our partner certification system by making it more complex and demanding. There are now several levels of certification, ‘gold’, ‘silver’, and regular. The companies proposed the system themselves to differ from one another. Besides, this expands their market positioning options. We have got about 1,000 partners in Yekaterinburg, ninety of whom are ‘gold’ ones. Thanks to the new system they will be divided, our estimates say, into 50% of ‘gold’ and 50% of ‘silver’ partners.