I graduated in 1987 majoring in Economics, after graduation I immediately got married and we travelled to the United States. At the time, the American economy was going through very tough times; it was the time of the BLACK MONDAY. I had anticipated working in a bank or perhaps the stock market, and I was not able to attain a job in my field. At the time it was the beginning of the usage of the PCs. A friend of mine suggested I apply for a job in the computing field; I never had an interest in such a field, and ironically I have been in the business ever since. I truly admire this particular industry for its continuous change and dynamics. From the 22 years that I have been working, half of them have been spent with Microsoft. I also worked in IBM, and Oracle. In addition I also worked in the States and the Gulf. However, joining Microsoft was completely different; it was by sheer chance that I applied to an advertisement Microsoft published in the newspaper. They needed someone to manage the Sequel Server, which is basically the database of Microsoft. As soon as I e-mailed my CV, I immediately got a call from them for an interview and things progressed rapidly - I was in Microsoft in 24 hours which was life changing. At the time I was working in Oracle. I have took on several positions in Microsoft since I joined; first I was the Sequel Server Director, then I was promoted to a regional position in Dubai, then I was promoted to General Manager of Microsoft Egypt for the last 7 and half years, which is a pretty long time, since the average span for a GM is 5 years, so it seems I am doing a good job until now. I am one of the veteran General Managers in Microsoft, and undoubtedly it’s been a life changing experience.

 

Piracy is an important issue for us at Microsoft. There are two sides to look at regarding this problem. One is that piracy rates are high and that is bad, simply because in developed markets piracy rates are low, therefore they are the most affected, since they are mature and saturated markets, while in the emerging markets the opportunity is huge for mircosoft.

 

Egypt is a success story in terms of Intellectual Property rights (IPR), the piracy rate here was 63% last year and now it is 60%, so it dropped 3 points which is great. Other emerging markets have much higher rates many of them are in the 80 percentile. Mature markets are anywhere between 20 to 30 %. The government is very helpful in supporting us in this matter.

 

IPR is about many things, the first is Awareness; to make people understand the importance of a genuine product and where to buy them. Secondly, the advantages of purchasing genuine products, and the disadvantages of pirated merchandise. People who sell pirated products are criminals, they evade taxes, own unregistered companies, sell illegal content and as a result the entire process is fraud.

People use computers to be more productive in their work, so the experience should be enjoyable, therefore the product price is extremely important so it is affordable to everyone. We have performed large initiative here in Egypt; we have the complete PC initiatives where we provided the government with the cheapest windows and office in the world for something like $50, which is up to 12 times cheaper than its normal price worldwide. Softwares are turning to Pay-as-you-go, just like any subscription. This service is provided through mobile operators or internet providers.

 

There are several ways to catch those pirates, when you are updating your windows or office, it is checked if it is a genuine product or not, then it sends signals to the user alerting him. The other way, is that we have people in the market who buy these pirated products and we document the cases, along with the ministry of communication and enforcement authorities, so that they are prosecuted. We have done a national radio campaign to reach out to people, with messages about the problems of piracy.

 

We have one of the best and fastest growing Microsoft subsidiaries in the world. The people are both happy and excited to be working here. Nice things have happened to us, Bill Gates has visited Egypt twice and Steve Ballmer also came once and is planning to visit again. We have won the best subsidiary award and it looks like we might take it this year yet again, which would be setting the record. Concerning challenges, we have to keep a very positive attitude and moral in terms of the economy that you read and hear in the news. One big challenge is transmiting positive messages to the employees, which will evidently reflect in their work and to our customers, since Egypt has not been directly affected. Think postively and don’t become affected by negative news. Companies and countries grow in tough times, so in terms of microsoft to obtain and aquire a larger market share, it is also a good time for Egypt to reposition itself as an outsourcing destination. Another very bizarre challenge would be traffic; I live in Heliopolis and commute daily to the Smart village. Traffic is a major problem all over Egypt. It really affects productivity and we become demoralized from the traffic. We keep flexible hours, some people can work from home if they don’t need to come, and we have arranged memberships in the smart village club, so they can work out. We try to accommodate our workforce.

 

We have one the best relationship with the government across the world since it is IT friendly and IT savvy, the Prime Minister was once the Minister of IT and an advocate of IT industry, besides their excellence; Dr. Tarek Kamal, Dr. Ahmed Darwish, Dr. Hatem El Gably and several other respected ministers use IT tremendously in order for the government to operate in a better way. Our partnership with the government started in 2000, so it has been for quite a long time now. Microsoft is the main partner with the government in the E-Gov project; it is about enhancing the way the governnment delivers its services to citizens and businssess. The first service was the telephone bill inquiry which started in 2001, now we probably have 82 E-Gov projects; we still have a long way to go since the government delivers about 800 services to the general public. Now you can pay your taxes on the internet, check your car registration and driver’s license;
apply to the university which is the projects that amazes me the most, we have been doing it for 2 years since 400,000 students applied in the 2 months and many more.

 

We received the best subsidary award after Bill Gate’s visit to Egypt. There are various criteria that they monitor, financial figures, our dealings with the government, what we are doing regarding education, and in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). We have the Microsoft partner Academy, a nation wide initiative to develop the IT industry, the idea of it was to take the training we give to our sales and technical people and deliver it to the companies in the local industry, we lecture people in computer science and give them ideas for their projects, throw a graduation party for them and an exhibition for their projects where we invite people from the local industry who can adopt their projects or hire the graduates. These were some of the things that were considered when they presented us with the award. Bill Gates said that “we can all learn from the things that are being done by Microsoft Egypt”. Corporate Excellence Award is given by the secretary of state for the best American company that is doing work in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) specifically what we are doing to enable the children who live in orphanges and the handicapped people to enhance their lives.

 

With great difficulty… My biggest problem is my time and my agenda. I have to be selective with the things I do and attend.and be smart in how I plan my day as well as my week. The main accomplishment I am very proud of is my board membership in the American Chamber of Commerce which is a very close tie with the business community in Egypt. I am honored to be on the board for 2 years and now I am vice president of the programs; both of these positions are designated, which is an honor to me. This makes me familiar to other industries besides the IT industry. One of the most interesting things that we do in the American chamber is that we go on something called the “Door Knock”; we set off to Washington and meet with members of the congress, senate and US administration. We talk to them about Egypt, and enlighten them regarding the business state, i.e. an objective non government perspective on how things are in Egypt. We advocate the Egyptian American business relations; in addition we also talk about politics from the business point of view. For example they don’t know that we have not been affected by the economic crisis so they need to hear this which may well attract further investment to the Egyptian Economy. When they see that American businesses are thriving in Egypt they are impressed and this attracts more investors and international businesses to Egypt.

 

We do several things here, all the arabization of Microsoft products are done here in Egypt. One of the challenges that Egypt faces is to get R&D facilities to Egypt, which is why we have opened the Microsoft Innovation Center. It mainly does advanced R&D which is basicaly Microsoft researcher and high level Microsoft developers. They report directly to the States. One of the researches they do is; research about Arabic - since the fastest growing internet users are Arabs - in fact we are growing at about 40% per year. They look into how people use the Arabic language on the internet, what the results will be after carrying out an Arabic search, and the Arabic content - which is very little. All of the research that is done here gets incorporated in the improvement of Microsoft technologies.