Sep. 4--LEHI -- Microsoft Corp. marked the opening Thursday of its new research and development office where it plans to employ as many as 100 people working on some key areas of the giant software company's products.

The opening and the addition of those high-paying jobs were announced in June. The facility was opened three weeks ago, and on Thursday the Redmond, Wash.-based, company marked the occasion with a ceremony featuring Sen. Orrin Hatch.

Brad Anderson, a Utah native and vice president of Microsoft's management-services division -- he oversees the Utah office -- said engineers will be working initially on helping customers to quickly upgrade computer operating systems to new Windows versions or to run various versions of Windows simultaneously.

"We expect the technology coming out of this Utah office will be used worldwide," Anderson said.

But Anderson also said he has bigger plans. One of the areas of future development is in the area of what Microsoft calls "flexible work styles" -- something particularly important to younger workers.

"They want to work anywhere," he said. "Work becomes an activity, not a location. We really want to enable users to be productive on any device, any where at any time."

Anderson said he was a champion within the company of "user-centric client computing.

"It's all about having the user be the center of everything we do," he said. It enables

the user to go to any device in their corporation, their home PC, their mother-in-law's PC, and have access to their applications and the things they need to be productive."

Hatch was shown a table-top computer run by touch, and he asked to play a guitar using the company's Xbox, the Microsoft game device. Hatch tried to play along with a Michael Jackson song but was only partially successful.

Anderson graduated from Granite High School in 1985, and then received a bachelor's degree in design engineering technology from Brigham Young University in 1991. His master of business administration degree came from Brigham Young University in 1997. He worked for a smaller company and then Novell before going to Microsoft in 2003.

Another Utah native is the immediate head of the Utah office. Paul Mayfield, Microsoft's director of engineering, is a 1997 graduate of the University of Utah.

Anderson would not disclose how many people Microsoft has hired, but praised the quality of the high-tech work force here.

"We have been incredibly pleased with that level of experience," he said. "In fact, the average experience of the team here in Utah is greater than any other single team I have under my supervision."

Most of those hired were being lured away from other companies where they had gained valuable experience, he said.

tharvey@sltrib.com

-----

To see more of The Salt Lake Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sltrib.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, The Salt Lake Tribune

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

NASDAQ-NMS:MSFT, NASDAQ-NMS:NOVL,

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.