Israel Economics

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>>In one respect, it is surprising that Gates has never visited Israel, which is considered second only to the United States as a source of new technologies for software, communications, semiconductors and life sciences.
The country may be small, but it has become a huge target for multinationals.
Steve Ballmer, second only to Gates, visited about a year ago.<<

Gates to meet with Sharon, executives on maiden visit

By Oded Hermoni

Seventeen years after Microsoft began operating in Israel, the company's founder and chairman, Bill Gates, arrived yesterday for his first visit to the country.

Gates will not be leaving his hotel, the David Intercontinental in Tel Aviv, during the 24-hour lightning visit, except for a short meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon elsewhere in the city.

In one respect, it is surprising that Gates has never visited Israel, which is considered second only to the United States as a source of new technologies for software, communications, semiconductors and life sciences. The country may be small, but it has become a huge target for multinationals. Steve Ballmer, second only to Gates, visited about a year ago.

The Microsoft development center in Haifa has about 200 employees working on software security, but the global company tends to downplay its contribution for fear of an Arab backlash.

Aside from his leading role at Microsoft, Gates and his wife Melinda have also become philanthropists. In 2000, they founded the biggest charity of its type in the world, which has so far disbursed $27 billion. It is not known whether Gates has any particular philanthropy in mind regarding his visit here.

Why did Gates choose now of all times? It is anybody's guess, but it could be part of the company's general restructuring. Just last week, Ballmer took the business world by surprise, saying Microsoft would become more nimble and quick, and shorten the periods between software upgrades.

Microsoft said only that the schedule suited Gates' itinerary: After Israel, he will be visiting Jordan.

Open code aficionados, whose activities are by and large the biggest threat to Microsoft, claim his visit is designed to strengthen Microsoft's relations with the community of developers, hoping to persuade them and startup entrepreneurs to base their developments on Microsoft platforms, not rival products by Linux or Sun Microsystems.

The Israeli government had made a stab at adopting open code platforms and convincing consumers to use Open Office instead of paying Microsoft. It failed. But the giant took note.

Gates will not be meeting with developers. But his visit to Israel signals that Israel matters to him, and that it's on the map.

Be that as it may, Microsoft lives in a more competitive world and that may explain why Gates' first meeting after landing in Israel will be with the nation's high-tech leaders, people whom Microsoft has tagged as being innovators, the people behind Check Point Software Technologies, Amdocs, Nice Systems, Verint Systems, and the startups Olive Software, Actimize, and others.

Later he will be meeting with Microsoft's business partners in Israel, as well as business leaders such as Amikam Cohen of Partner Communications; Chemi Peres of Pitango; Yaron Zelekha, the accountant general at the Finance Ministry; Izzy Borovich of El Al and Granite Hacarmel; Zvi Ziv, the CEO of Bank Hapoalim; and Jacob Gelbard, the leader of Pelephone Communications and now Bezeq. At the end, Gates will meet with 400 Israeli Microsoft workers.

Tomorrow Gates will be lecturing before 2,000 business leaders on the new work space, and visions of future software for business applications. He will also be meeting with 40 outstanding high school students to discuss technological innovation. He will be leaving Israel at 3 P.M.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/637772.html

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