Microsoft, in association with the Basque Government, has presented ''Berrikuntza Euskaraz'', the biggest wave of ICT tools available in the Basque language to be released in recent times. From now on, tools such as Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and CRM Online may also be accessed in Basque.

The San Telmo Museum in Donostia-San Sebastian provided the backdrop for Monday''s ''Berrikuntza Euskaraz'' presentation, during which, in addition to announcing the availability of these Microsoft tools in Euskera, the IT company and the Basque Government celebrated a joint collaboration that goes back ten years.

More than 150 well-known figures from the Basque Country''s political, business, academic, and artistic circles were present at the event, which also included performances from various groups such as local acrobatic dance company, Acroindar.

Basque Culture Secretary, Blanca Urgell, delivered the closing speech in which she stressed that Monday''s event had highlighted "a business need to focus on multilingualism and language diversity as an essential element for servicing the (Basque) community."

Lurdes Auzmendi, Deputy Secretary for Linguistic Policy in the Basque Government, stressed the importance of Microsoft''s support for the Basque language via some of its most recent tools, and highlighted "some of the key projects that will get underway this year" such as "the creation of 10,000 topics in the Basque language to be published in Wikipedia; the activation of an automatic translation system and the creation of a Public Bank of Traslation Recall."

Interface packs can be downloaded completely free of charge via the microsoft.es/eus website or by going to euskara.euskadi.net/euskara_soft.