The head of Microsoft for Europe, Middle East and Africa said the likely benefit to Microsoft would be some 7 to 8 percent of the grants won by small and medium-sized firms to develop their information technology capabilities.
"It's not a high percentage of our business, but it aligns us with regional and local aspirations," Neil Holloway told Reuters in an interview in Athens as he prepared to launch the initiative in Greece on October 18.
"Hopefully, ultimately, Europe wins too."
The European Union is making the funds available until 2006 to further the strategy of the 2000 Lisbon Agenda, which aims to fight low productivity and economic stagnation in Europe and turn the continent into the world's most dynamic economy by 2010.
Microsoft, which is in dispute with the EU on several legal fronts, made global sales of $39.8 billion in its last fiscal year to June. It does not break down its revenues by region.
Greece is the 11th EU country to be targeted by the three tech giants. Microsoft's country manager for Greece, Chris Tsangos, said only one in four small Greek firms had a personal computer and, of those, only one in three had Internet access. Microsoft defines small and medium enterprises as companies with up to 1,000 staff. These firms are relatively virgin territory for Microsoft, SAP and Oracle, which between them have sewn up most of the software business with larger corporations.