The new office in Rome will enable the company to build its European client base following a number of recent successes across the continent.

This expansion puts LINK Development in the privileged position of being one of very few Egyptian IT companies serving the European market - a trend that is steadily growing as Egypt's IT potential gains more exposure on a global level.

The company is a world-class provider of e-solutions with a focus on portals & intranets, e-commerce, Enterprise Integration, Microsoft CRM implementations, Helpdesk Solutions, Unified communications and IPTV.

Furthermore, it has built substantial experience in the telecom sector, developing value-added services such as messaging and collaboration services, IPTV and digital rights management.

As one of the largest software development houses in the Middle East and North Africa region, LINK Development has built an unrivalled portfolio of award-winning work and a substantial client base in countries as diverse as Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Algeria and in Africa Mauritius, Kenya and Malawi.

Having achieved this position at the forefront of the industry in the region, the company set its sights to entering the European market and has consequently studied its requirements over the past few years.

In order to build its profile in the continent, active participation in leading European trade shows has been on the company's agenda, with Cebit being a major platform for exposure for the company in the last three years. It has already begun building a European customer base, having recently delivered large offshore development projects to Greece and Italy.

The company has also worked in partnership with Microsoft over the last ten years, and has been a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in five competency areas for more than eight years.

Its continuous focus on training and certification has enabled it to achieve ISO 9001:2000 and CMMI Level 3 certifications, and to have more than half of Microsoft's Most Valued Professionals (MVPs) in Egypt.

The skills of its 270-strong team of software professionals cover areas from software development and design to project management and quality engineering.

In addition, the team's skills combine the strengths of software development with creative design - two areas in which the company continues to build its talent and capabilities - thus enabling the company to deliver complete e-business solutions.

According to Abdel Meguid, the growing interest from European companies stems from Egypt being in closer geographical proximity, and therefore has smaller time differences, than its Asian counterpart India.

In addition, English and French are commonly used languages in the country's IT circle, which removes the hurdle of multilingual communication and enables a better understanding of cultures.

'More importantly, with IT becoming a booming industry in the country, Egypt is able to offer a broad base of professionals skilled in software development with international certifications,' says Abdel Meguid.

'With the company's large resources, breadth of scope and strength of expertise and skills, I believe LINK Development is very well placed to succeed in this market,' she concludes.

Microsoft will distribute Flash Lite and Reader programs from Adobe Systems Inc. to cell phone makers who use its Windows Mobile software.

Flash also allows users to interact with more Web sites. It's the software behind most shopping sites where you can view an item in different colors or try out house paint colors on a virtual home.

"Flash content is the most prolific content on the web today; it is the way people express themselves on the Internet," Adobe spokesman Gary Kovacs said.

Julie Ask, an analyst at Juniper Research, said cell customers are more likely to browse the Web when they have more capable phones, and that's good news for advertisers.

"The more likely they are to use it, the more that folks are willing to invest in the platform, and the more likely there are to be page views. It's good for advertisers, it's good for carriers," Ask said.

Scott Rockfeld, group product manager at Microsoft's mobile communications business, said the decision was about providing more choice to its customers, even though Windows Mobile already offers 18,000 applications for everything from picking a wine to go with dinner to watching videos.

"Obviously it's one of the things that customers are asking for. Flash is something that is very prevalent on the Web," Rockfeld said.

In 2007, 11 million phones carried Windows Mobile. Microsoft expects to double that in the next year.

Over half a billion mobile devices have shipped worldwide with Flash preinstalled, amounting to a 150 year-over-year percent growth, Adobe said.

Microsoft wouldn't say what it is paying Adobe to license the software, but the programs will remain free for end-users.

Microsoft has its own video viewing software, Silverlight, considered a competitor that could slowly chip away at market share for Adobe's Flash. Microsoft said last month it would give 1 billion students free access to Silverlight and other software that competes with Adobe, such as Expression Studio.

"We're going to make sure that the JVM offers the Java applications as much access to the native functionality of the iPhone as possible," he said.

The specific version of Java will be based on the Java Micro Edition (ME) and will open the iPhone to a large library of existing Java applications. Sun's announcement comes after reviewing the iPhone SDK since its release just on Thursday. Sun expects to release this version of Java "some time after June".

Sun maintains a sample library of Java ME games and applications. This list includes EA Sims Bowling, Scrabble, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Libris eBook reader, and more.

Sun adds its name to a list of other developers who have already announced support for the iPhone. Others include Gameloft, Omnigroup, Freeverse, SixApart, reQall, EA, and Epocrates.

EMC on Monday said it has acquired privately held Infra, a provider of IT service management software. Financial details were not disclosed. EMC, a maker of data storage technology, said the acquisition fits into its strategy of providing software to automate data center operations. Infra provides Web-based technology that can manage the lifecycle of IT services.

EMC said the acquisition is not expected to have a material impact on this year's revenues or earnings. The integration of Infra technology with EMC's infrastructure management software is expected to meet customer demand for better tools for managing virtualization and Web-based technologies in the data center. "The combination of Infra's service management and EMC's existing infrastructure management capabilities delivers practical and innovative solutions for today's IT service delivery challenges," Chris Gahagan, EMC senior VP of resource management software, said in a statement. Infra's software, called InfraEnterprise, includes a software service desk with incident, problem, change, configuration, release, service level and availability management processes. In addition, the software includes a workflow engine. The acquisition is expected to provide Infra with the financial and technology resources needed to expand its product line.

The company will become a part of EMC's resource management software business unit. Andy Wade, managing director of Infra, will continue to lead the InfraEnterprise team and report directly to Gahagan. The Infra acquisition is the second in less than a month for EMC. The company last month bought startup Pi, adding technology expected to boost EMC's effort to build an online data-hosting service that would likely compete with companies like IBM and Amazon. Pi, which had yet to release a product, was beta-testing software and services that would help people "find, access, share, and protect" their personal digital information. The company had about 100 engineers in the United States, Canada, and India.