Bermuda is in pole position to take on a leading role in the electronic revolution, according to a top executive from Microsoft.

And the Island can boast more Microsoft partners than in the rest of the English speaking Caribbean.

Martin Taylor, General Manager of Microsoft Caribbean, said that Bermuda had wonderful resources at its finger tips which could attract a great deal of business.

Speaking to The Royal Gazette after giving a talk at the e-Commerce Conference yesterday at the Hamilton Princess, he said: "I think this has been a good conference to highlight Bermuda and e-commerce. I was here last year and hope to come again next year.

"E-commerce is an area of great opportunity for Bermuda. The combined benefit of the tax law, established financial sector, regulations, its position with band width data pipelines, and the high level of technical expertise is easy to see. It is a great place for this kind of business and this conference is a very good way of getting people to think about here,'' Mr. Taylor was in Bermuda to address some 200 delegates attending the conference and spoke about the new e-conomy. His hour-long talk was on How to Build a Corporate Purchasing Solution.

"It is very important how you see your market,'' he told The Royal Gazette after his talk. "The economy is bigger than selling on the Internet. There is business to customers, business to employee and business to business. I explained about these different segments and spoke about potential markets.'' Mr. Taylor is based in San Juan in Puerto Rico, and Bermuda is part of his patch.

"It is important to build a reliable, robust platform from which to do business. The next wave of Microsoft products are about dot net structures, which will enable web servers to talk to each other.'' Mr. Taylor said he was taking the opportunity while in Bermuda to speak to Microsoft's partners.

He said: "We have eight certified partners here. We have more partners here in Bermuda than we have in the rest of the English speaking Caribbean. It is an incredible statistic for an Island with a population of 65,000. It is a very sophisticated environment here.'' BUSINESS BUC