"The CMIC is an Asset to Microsoft, Egypt and Millions of People around the World"

By Dr. Wael Bahaa-El-Din, Technical Fellow

The CMIC is an Asset to Microsoft, Egypt and Millions of People around the World.

I am impressed with the progress of the Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center (CMIC) during its first two years of development. CMIC has hired excellent leaders and talent, has formulated a strong vision, developed close alliances with local universities and industry, aligned the center’s vision with its role to improve the life of the world wide Egyptian and Arab community, and made some innovations that will be included in Microsoft products. CMIC has focused on important technologies already such as information retrieval and content retrieval. The CMIC with the help of the local community has determined that health and education are the most important application areas that can benefit both the community and the region. The first two years are definitely the hardest but I am very pleased that the center has reached critical mass and has made good progress in some of its major goals.

CMIC is an important part of Microsoft’s World Wide Development strategy to distribute innovation centers around the globe to leverage the great talent everywhere and assist local communities in contributing innovations that result in advancements of local education, health, and economy. This enables many countries to become active participants in the development of global software technologies and not just users of it. Many communities like India and China have benefited from such innovation and research centers in building their local software industry and charging their economies. In turn, Microsoft has significantly benefited from these centers in expanding its circle of innovation, enhancing its software offering, reducing software piracy, improving software development costs, attracting global talent, and expanding its customer base.

Egypt is in a great position to be a strong player in the global software and IT industries and follows the footsteps of India, China, Ireland, Canada, Turkey, Russia and Brazil. This will require continuing to attract some of the distributed Egyptian and Middle Eastern talent from around the world. It will also require a plan where the people focus their efforts on a few technology and application areas so progress can be made in a timely manner. The Egyptian government can assist greatly by continuing its efforts of promoting free markets, improving computer science education, reducing piracy, and giving great incentives to the local software industry.

Over the years, many Egyptian and Middle Eastern expatriates in North America and Europe have expressed the desire to return to the region if given a chance to work in a productive and innovative environment. CMIC is in a unique position to attract some of these highly skilled expats who are ready to spend some time in the Middle East. They can choose to spend a few months, many years, or longer and feel the impact of their projects on the lives of millions of people. CMIC can definitely provide a great environment for expats.

Many Egyptian and Middle Eastern expatriates and I are both thrilled and committed to assist CMIC in its plans to triple its size in the coming year by assisting in its strategy, guidance, support, and recruiting in order to assist the center to flourish. I look forward to continuing to work with the CMIC as it continues to achieve great successes.

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