Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie is a side of Microsoft’s 3 sided triangle of leadership after Bill Gates’s quitting. Craig has lately visited Cairo for the first time and met with the Egyptian Prime Minister Dr Ahmed Nazif and Minister of Communications and Information Technology Dr Tarek Kamel in the frame of his visit to Egypt checking out the company’s projects and the development witnessed in the Egyptian Innovation lab established by the company within its initiative held with the Egyptian government. Al Ahram Newspaper was one of three newspapers invited to hold this interview with Craig in his first visit to Egypt in which he gets familiar with the latest in IT industry and the corporate projects held between his company and the government.

"Mr Craig Mundie this is your first visit to Egypt,so how was it?And what were the most important issues discussed with the Egyptian Prime Minister Dr Ahmed Nazif ?What was the main target behind the visit?".

I am so glad to visit Egypt for the first time, Bill Gates visited Egypt many times before abd met with the Egyptian Prime Minister and Officials and had good impressions reflecting from those visits. I was accompanying him in Davos when he met with the Egyptian Prime Minister Dr Ahmed Nazif and it was a very good meeting. We listened carefully to the Prime Minister’s discussion concerning general problems in Egypt especially education, health, attempts to create vacancies, the huge increase in population as well as other problems. I met the Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology Dr Tarek Kamel for the first time when I was in a meeting with the Egyptian Prime Minister Dr Ahmed Nazif and we proceeded with discussing the issues we started back in Davos and we talked about what can be done to proceed with executing programs that we are still working on in Egypt. I guess there is an opportunity to agree on forming a kind of a corporate committee that shall push forward certain suggestions in some of these regions.
The main target behind the visit is visiting the Egyptian Innovation lab we formerly inaugurated. We decided to focus on supporting Arabic language research and development capabilities through the center although we have a lot of employees in our HQ who can really deal with the Arabic language in a very good way but still the company didn’t possess a specialized place for profound researches for the case. That is why we decided to invest in such a center that shall work on these researches and at the same time will push forward important aspects such as health, education, converting software languages into Arabic language…etc.

"The Egyptian Innovation lab visited today is the first of its kind in the ME and the second in the whole world after Germany’s center. Does its operation differ from other centers established by Microsoft? And why did u choose Egypt in specific?".

Designing applications needs a long time for sure in the field of research and program writing finalized at the end to act as products that are launched into markets. We need to always work bearing the time limit space in mind to accomplish future works. My job in Microsoft is to focus on works that are expected to be executed in the period between 3 – 15 years from now, one of the most challenging problems facing us is covering the time gap that separates between thinking of a product and pushing it to come to reality. So, Innovation labs are established to block this time gap we’re talking about as their employees are working on near future ideas rather than focusing on daily work activities.
We call that applicable researches and we chose Egypt because location shall affect many levels; first of all, we have a huge history in cooperating with the Egyptian government, the thing that makes us feel relieved, the region as well is witnessing a fast growth and is stable to a huge limit. In this framework, we need the presence of bigger capabilities in dealing with the Arabic language inside our products therefore one of the Egyptian Innovation lab’s main targets is not only offering innovative ideas but to offer these ideas in a way that can result in a huge benefit to the Arabic language society speakers. We think that Egypt is full of talents and that is why our vision says that the location possesses an environment that is so helpful to us with the presence of cooperating countries, rising economy and Arabic language skills. These points altogether gave us certainty that Egypt is the ideal place to establish Microsoft’s Innovation lab.

"What is the importance of researches and development in the IT industry? How do you see the situation here in Egypt on the regional level concerning such an industry?"

Researches and development in the IT industry is blood to the human body, without them no company can survive in the market. Microsoft spends a huge part of its capital in this field and I guess today there aren’t more than 2 companies working in the field of petroleum and cars who are spending more money than Microsoft on researches and they are achieving much more profits as well.
A huge part of researches and development goes on to Windows and Office assembly lines because they are the products that became a part of the daily life of millions of people in communications, cooperation, entertainment, productivity and activities in general. These products need continuous developing and an adoption to a lot of cultural, legal and language changes. Despite of being one of the biggest applications production companies keen on other languages but still we need to offer programs to other languages so that products become easier for users. Microsoft depends in a huge way on its partners to build more applications, what we admire in the Egyptian situation is the government’s stability concerning the aspects it cares about and we have hope that the region would achieve a better political stability the thing that means the increase in economic growth. We desired the existence of a strong base to our operations in the region and the Minister of Communications and Information Technology Dr Tarek made clear that Egypt is the best choice and is the place where we hope to achieve a lot in.

"Granting governments the right to view Windows system source code is a national security issue according to your former declarations so how is that? Does this commitment include all governments?"

Commitment is applied to the majority of governments; we designed the program after I performed huge tasks 9 years ago in China, France and some other countries. Those countries’ national security establishments were so concerned with this issue especially because they had the right to use such applications but they have no idea what its actual content looks like, that is why a lot of doubts arouse concerning trusting such products. At the past, we were trying to protect out industrial secrets to limit hacking problems but this situation pushed governments to doubt these products and that is why we decided executing a program that allows governments who possess concern and technical abilities to perform that type of detailed analysis to our products. Infact, this is a type of cooperation performed by the company not only to guarantee product security but to create a state of transparency around allowing some governments to check source code making sure that it doesn’t contain anything doubtful. At the meantime, there are around 60 governments who gained benefit from this program among which was Egypt and we received a huge number of positive feedbacks that assisted us in improving security levels in following products. This step was a part of the Safe Computing initiative launched by the company.

"IT market is changing so fast and along with Gates’s quitting there will be three leaders in Microsoft: Craig Mundie, Ray Ozzie and Steve Ballmer . . . How do you foretell the chances of keeping on track and competing in the shadows of this triple leadership?"

We have to fill the leadership gap so fast, we have actually announced that Bill Gates is leaving his position in summer 2008 the thing that signifies 18 months from now, but we made some changes in the leadership structure to divide the tasks he performed: The first half goes for me and the second goes to Ray Ozzie. Gates is now working with Ozzie to guarantee a smooth handling over process but restructuring leadership and dividing tasks have been already done. So, I am walking beside Bill Gates at the meantime and although Gates is leaving daily work but he will stay as the company’s President and we shall for sure gain benefit from his experience but the three of us are the ones who shall decide the company’s future directions. Certainly there’s a strong competition in the market but we possess the ability not only to create new business opportunities but to create new competing methods in the markets where challenges increase.