Ballmer said at a meeting with National ICT Australia board members he was impressed with the aims and scope of the AU$129.5 million project, which is designed to foster Australia's research and development capability in the information technology and communications sector.
He said the fledgling centre - opened a few weeks ago - would provide "a flashpoint, a spark for technology entrepreneurs".
"The Australian government I think is working on exactly the right kinds of things to leave the right kind of [industry development] ingredients around," Ballmer said.
Richard Alston, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, a major backer of the ICT Centre of Excellence, welcomed Ballmer's support.
"It is a credit to NICTA's core partners, its board and management that the establishment process has reached this stage, allowing the ICT flagship of the Government's AU$2.9 billion Backing Australia's Ability project to get down to business," said Alston.
The degree of collaboration between Microsoft and NICTA has not been finalised yet. "We have been talking to Microsoft Australia as we have been talking to a number of organisations," NICTA vice-president Professor Bob Williamson told ZDNet Australia.
"We're talking to them as a like-minded organisation," said Williamson. "We see virtue in being able to work with them. Microsoft is consistently saying their future rides on the back of research. One of the reasons you do long-term research is to ultimately derive economic benefit from it."
Williamson said the goals of the two organisations overlapped in some areas, such as networks and security.
The centre aims to build linkages between private and public sector research organisations, with its goals centred around shared training, technology and product development targets. It aims to build to a critical mass of around 300 ICT researchers at three separate locations by the end of its fifth year.
Ballmer's visit to the centre was among several stops on a trip in which the Microsoft chief executive has made a number of colourful remarks, including threatening the removal of Xbox from sale in Australia if a court decision legitimising "mod chips" is not overturned by legislation.
"Given the way the economic model works--and that is a subsidy followed, essentially, by fees for every piece of software sold--our license framework has to do that," a newspaper quoted Ballmer as saying. "If there are aspects that are not allowed, it would encourage us to require a change in the legal framework. Otherwise, it wouldn't make economic sense."
Microsoft suck!