Microsoft opens new R&D facility in Israel

“THIS IS A FUN DAY for me” bellowed Steve Ballmer as he met press inside Microsoft’s spanking new strategic research and development centre in Israel this morning.

Ballmer had flown in for just a few short hours to inaugurate the new Microsoft campus, encompassing two buildings in Israel’s high tech yuppy city, Herzeliya. The Vole’s new 13,000 metres squared of research and development space now adds to Mighty-Soft’s old R&D facility, which has been up and running in Haifa since 1991.

Together, the facilities currently employ 600 technology specialists and the Microsoft has announced that it will be hiring a further 150 over the course of the next year.

“If you do the math, Microsoft is almost as much an Israeli company as it is an American company”, said Ballmer as he explained that by dividing the entire population of Israel by the number of Microsoft employees, the amount of employees per capita was significant. “This wouldn’t be true for India and China where we have other strategic development centres, because they just have so many darn people!” he added.

Israel is, in fact, the only other country outside of China and India to be considered a Volish “strategic” R&D centre. This is probably the reason Microsoft’s Israeli workforce has ‘strategically’ grown by some 400 per cent over the last two years.

Ballmer gushed: “Israel is an excellent example of the outstanding innovation Microsoft is developing globally. I predict that Israel's importance to Microsoft as a centre of innovation will grow significantly in the coming years”. He added that Microsoft was committed to continued investment in Israel , to supporting growth in the country and creating new opportunities.

Moshe Lichtman, VP of Microsoft worldwide and also the president of the new R &D facility in Israel noted that the campus represented, “the peak of an unprecedented expansion process by Microsoft's Israeli research and development over the past two years."

Microsoft's Israeli R&D will apparently be focusing on developing technologies in a range of different fields, including telecom, security, PC health and more.

The company’s branch here is also meant to be a hotbed for "in-house" startups (incubated startups) which the Vole sees as its main investment and strength in pushing forward into relatively new markets for the firm, including telecom, Internet and digital entertainment.

In the last few years, Microsoft has snapped up several local startups. Recently, the company acquired no less than five Israeli startups, four of which have fully integrated their staffs and technologies into Microsoft. Whale Communications (specialising in SSL VPN) was bought by the vole in May 2006, this was followed by the acquisition of Gteko (Automated Support for home PCs) in November 2006. Secure Dimensions (software tools for combating piracy) followed in January 2007.

Yadata, which focuses on customer behavioral patterns was swallowed in March of this year and follwed a month later by Kidaro, which makes virtualisation technology.

The firm also claims that Israel is the only other place outside the US to have Microsoft innovation labs which concentrate on the development of “Disruptive technology” which the company believes will revolutionise the market.

Microsoft Israel’s head, Danny Yamin said " Microsoft's technology has changed the way of life in Israel and has been a tremendous economic catalyst for the Israeli market".

Steve Ballmer's last visit to Israel was in 2004 and this was soon followed by a visit from Bill Gates himself in 2005. Even Israel’s president, Shimon Peres turned out for the inauguration of the new building. µ