ALKHOBAR, 24 December 2002 — I love it when I find individuals working to do something grand. There have been lots of announcements by huge Saudi organizations stating that they are planning to use the Internet to do wondrous things. I have seen that few of these efforts come to fruition. Lately though I have been encountering more and more individuals who are using technology to empower excellent ideas and I really enjoy giving these ventures some attention.
A few young people in the Eastern Province have gotten together and created a website that they hope with time will develop into a strong resource to help medical students at the Kingdom’s universities. Their website is smsomd.com and their project is called Saudi Medical Students Online (SMSO). It is important to emphasize that this is a completely independent project carried out by volunteers using private donations.
“The curriculum at all the Kingdom’s medical schools is basically the same,” said Osamah Al-Marzooq, SMSO founder and general coordinator. “Our idea is to provide a link between all the medical students in the Kingdom. Our goal is that the site will serve not just students studying to become physicians, but that eventually the site will be a resource for students studying in any area related to medicine.”
Right now the basic website is up and operational. Volunteer coordinators are being recruited from each college in each area of medical studies. These coordinators will liase with the central site management team to ensure that the needs of the medical students at each college are covered.
What could these needs be?
“There are no study aids available in the Kingdom for medical students,” said Al-Marzooq. “We hope to post supplementary course notes, old exam questions, diagnostic photographs, research sources — really anything that can assist medical students in spending more time learning and less time repeating previous efforts or running in circles looking for information.”
The site also hopes to publicize student activities and advise students on effective ways to spend their free time including what books to read or programs to support. If enough resources can be mobilized, in the future the site may be able to carry English to Arabic translations of curriculum material especially for courses taught to first year medical students.
The Saudi Medical Students Online organizers begin active promotion of the site at the Conference for Gulf Medical Students, which is to be held in Bahrain at the beginning of January. We wish them every success.
Next on today’s agenda, I received a press release from HP that screamed: “HP Holds Firm No. 1 Position in Worldwide Disk Storage Systems, Open Storage Area Networks.” The release went on to state that IDC reported that HP held the No. 1 position in total disk storage revenue in the third quarter of 2002 with 27 percent market share. In addition, HP took the No. 1 spots in open storage area networks (SANs), in total external storage (networked storage plus external direct-attached storage) and in total external RAID storage. Moreover, HP posted positive gains quarter over quarter in every major category of the report, despite overall market declines.
The press release continued that comparatively, HP’s 27 percent share in worldwide disk storage systems factory revenue was seven points higher than No. 2 IBM and 16 points higher than EMC — a three-point increase from the previous quarter. In open SANs, HP’s 30 percent market share was three points higher than No. 2 EMC. HP also held the top spot for SAN units shipped with 38 percent market share, a seven percent gain over the second quarter. In external storage, HP led with 21.9 percent share, ahead of EMC at 15.9 percent and IBM at 14.6 percent. HP also took the No. 1 position in external RAID storage for the first time with 19.6 percent share.
This was all very interesting for companies in the storage business. Thus, I was curious what a company like STME would think about the HP report, especially because the information in it is supposed to be valid “worldwide.” Just for the record, STME bills itself as “The leader in enterprise storage, providing the Middle East with best-of-breed technology, integrated solutions and superlative service.”
“Global analyst numbers do not accurately reflect the current market situation, especially here in the Middle East, where solid reporting data can be difficult to locate,” said Andrew Calthorpe, STME’s Senior Corporate Vice President. “Certainly corporations in the Kingdom are increasingly deploying disk-based storage and storage area networks, but we believe EMC to be the hardware leader in the Saudi market. As a storage expert, STME has been serving end-users in Saudi for 20 years now, and in the past three years, STME has seen its EMC-based deployments grow by more than 300 percent.”
What an amusing response! I hope you all chuckled over it as much as I did. But now, we must move on to some serious business.
In recent weeks Microsoft Corporation has been receiving serious negative attention in the Saudi media. It seems that every few days there’s some terrible report about the company’s latest activities in Israel and the illustrations accompanying the stories have been extremely aggressive. Some of my colleagues in the media have asked me why I haven’t convinced Arab News to join in the Microsoft bashing. I would have loved to, but I have a slight problem. I believe that journalists are supposed to behave ethically. This meant investigating the issue from both sides of the story, which took some time.
I am a well-known critic of Microsoft. I think that they have too much control over the way we handle information and I worry how that negatively impacts consumers, businesses and governments. Over the years Microsoft has felt the wrath of my pen on numerous occasions and they have sometimes been very unhappy about my editorial coverage. However, no matter what I’ve ever written about Microsoft, I’ve always based it on the facts as I was able to find them, and my comments today will be no different.
According to a posting at the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “The Ministry of Defense signed a framework agreement with Microsoft that will enable the Israeli defense establishment to use Microsoft desktop and enterprise software for three years, GLOBES reported. The agreement was settled by a Ministry of Defense procurement delegation in New York, in cooperation with the Ministry of Defense Procurement and Production Directorate and the Israel Defense Forces teleprocessing brigade and Central Data Processing Unit (Mamram). Israel’s military procurement from Microsoft will be financed mainly with US aid.” Israeli media sources put the total cost of the deal at 100 million shekels ($21,288,000), a figure not confirmed by Microsoft.
Many people have been upset that the Microsoft deal is to be financed with US aid. The facts are that US aid to Israel conservatively amounts to $3 billion annually. Israel would like to have that figure doubled. It also receives additional US funding in loans, which may amount to $10 billion in the coming year. US legislation requires that much of the US aid to Israel be used for purchases from US companies. Microsoft, as a publicly held company, has obligations to increase profitability. Making sales in Israel is one way to do so. Many US companies benefit from US aid to Israel, US arms manufacturers more than others. In the Arab Middle East, Jordan and Egypt both use US aid for purchases from American firms.
Another Microsoft transgression recently reported by Saudi newspapers was that the company is developing spying software for Israel. In regards to this issue Microsoft has categorically denied that it produces special software for Israel to spy on the World Wide Web. The company confirmed that it basically does not develop any software or applications for specific countries or organizations. Rather, it develops products that everyone has the right to buy and use without exception and as per their needs.
Fahad Al-Sudairy, marketing manager, Microsoft Arabia, stated in a press release that Microsoft does not develop any software for military use. However, Microsoft has never put restrictions on nor dictated how its programs should be used in this field. Each end user determines the program’s use. Microsoft claimed that fabricated information was posted to the alburaq.net website about Microsoft developing software for military use. Microsoft asserted that it does not produce or develop spying software.
Microsoft emphasized that the recent article and picture published with it by Alriyadh newspaper which stereotyped the company as pro-Israel has deeply offended all its Arab and Muslim employees who occupy various positions within the company ranging from top management to product managers, security, and Arabization.
“Microsoft is an international company and does not belong to any government or organization whether official or unofficial. The interests of shareholders are the basis of its work practice,” said Al-Sudairy.
While I have no difficulty in accepting Microsoft’s statements in regards to software development and the use of its software, Microsoft is also insisting that Bill Gates’ comments during his interview by some journalists, including a reporter from the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, were taken entirely out of context.
I don’t know how Gates’ comments might be out of context but the statement published by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website (http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0mto0) is very clear. I believe that readers should have the right to evaluate its meaning. The exact posting at the website is:
“Expressing confidence in the future of Israeli technology, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said that his company will expand its investment in Israel in the future, Yediot Aharonot reported. We are investing and continue to invest in our research and development in Israel. Our team in Israel has recently been handed with some challenging and ambitious tasks. They are working with new developments, particularly in the field of digital security. In this area Israel has an impressive record of accomplishment, Gates said.
“Gates said that despite the political and security situation, Israel continues to represent the cutting edge of innovation, and Microsoft will continue to be a part of it. There is no connection between the war that Israel is fighting and the future of the technology that is being created there, he said. He added that while the company is always concerned about the welfare of its employees, security concerns won’t stop us from deepening our activities in Israel.”
Microsoft Israel, founded in 1989, is one of the few Microsoft outposts abroad fully owned and operated by the US parent company. Microsoft set up its first research and development center outside the USA, in Haifa. But Microsoft is not the only technology company with investments in Israel. For example, Intel retains its largest R&D center in Israel as well as huge manufacturing facilities. IBM employs hundreds of scientists and engineers at its design facility in Haifa.
Israel has become a major international center for software design and development. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies can be counted among the clients of Israeli software houses and software startups, including Air France, AT&T, Berlitz, Chrysler, Deutsche Aerospace, Dunlop, Ford, Philips, Samsung, Siemens, Southwestern Bell, the central banks of France and Japan, to name but a few.
International IT companies can use Israel as not only a base for Middle East operations, but also take advantage of Israel’s tariff free access to both the European Union and North America. Israel is the only country worldwide to be both an associate member of the EU and enjoy free trade agreements with the US and Canada. Overseas software exports from Israel in the year 2000 were $2.6 billion. How much software did Saudi Arabia export? Why?
In all my research, one of the most interesting pieces of information I discovered was a report on the attempt by a member of the Israeli Knesset to make Israel an open source-only country. The proposal — actually an amendment to the Mandatory Tenders Law — would require Israeli government agencies and institutions to only purchase software based on open-source code. The idea behind the law was to bridge the Microsoft licensing price gap to bring down the cost of computers and make PCs more accessible to the poor. It was thought that if the Israeli government shifted to open-source software, citizens of Israel would have more incentive to acquire open-source software for themselves, if only to be compatible with government and education agencies. It was hoped that this lead-by-example policy would effectively reduce the overall cost of a PC by removing Microsoft Windows and other proprietary software as a part of the PC purchase price.
As of yet, the movement to take the Israeli government open-source hasn’t succeeded. But it amazed me that in a country that seems to have many incentives to remain part of Microsoft’s world, a representative of the people stood up for the interests of the citizens of Israel.
There are plenty of valid reasons not to use Microsoft products and honestly I wish more people would consider trying open-source software. But this continuous bashing of Microsoft because of its legal business practices is sickening. If the Arab Middle East would stop nurturing its deficiencies and concentrate on methods for achieving success, we could become so much more important to the global business community than the tiny country that is Israel.
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