BANGALORE: The center, which will deal exclusively with high-end products, is coming up at Electronics City with a pilot project manned by some 100 professionals. The Bangalore centre is part of the $400-million investment that Microsoft chief Bill Gates had announced during his last visit to India in November 2003. "Microsoft product support services support 54 million customers globally on an annual basis. In order to continue its efforts of deriving customer focus and quality, Microsoft is announcing a pilot programme in Bangalore to support select Microsoft professional products,Â’Â’ Rajiv Kaul, Managing Director, Microsoft India, was quoted as saying by a business daily. In addition to its employees, the product support centre will be complemented with an additional workforce of 250 from the Microsoft partner companies including Infosys, Wipro, TCS and Satyam among others. The center will employ professionals with technical expertise in Microsoft products like Windows XP, Server 2003. Simultaneously, Microsoft is ramping up its development centre located at Hitech City in Hyderabad from 200 to 500 developers. A dedicated campus is now going to be built in Hyderabad and an investment of $75-100 million is earmarked for this purpose. "The focus on the India development centre continues to be the development of strategic products and technologies for customers all over the world,Â’Â’ Kaul added. Concurrently, the company is hiring a core team of 150 Internet application professionals over the next 12 months. (Source: ET)