About the US-Israel Web 2.0 Business Exchange

IBM in partnership with the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce.

Working title and sub-theme of “US-Israel Web 2.0 Business Exchange” and “Empowering the Connected Enterprise” are chosen to highlight the focus on:

• Enterprise to Employee – Internal use of Web 2.0 and community tools
• Connecting with partners and suppliers
• Connecting with customers and consumers
• The infrastructure and security that supports the Web 2.0 application

Approximately 40 US companies should be targeted to include 4 or more separate IBM teams representing technologists, account teams & marketing, 5-6 VCs, and relevant mature US ISVs as well as IBM customers (Integrated and Aligned in the region and nationally such as UPS, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, and other accounts).  Academic institutions such as Georgia Tech’s College of Computing and IBM’s Academic initiatives group expressed interest in being involved.  Cisco and North Highland have been approached and are considering being involved as a corporate sponsor.  Target participant titles will be CIO, CTO, CMO, and Corporate Development.  It is important that these contacts be built around the brand, sales, and consulting IBM alignments.

General Topics suggested:

• Marketing - business collaboration
• Information management & sharing
• Enterprise applications and software as a service (SaaS)
• Talent management
• Customer management
• Customer experience
• Security issues specific to Web 2.0. 

• Use of Dojo/Lotus mashups
• IM – Mashup Hub
• Rational – Jazz
• Websphere – App Server Packs (use of Dojo)

A target of 20 emerging companies with most reserved for Israeli companies and a few from Georgia / Southeast / US with the prospects coming from both the GTU and outside. An initial list of 30 companies should be developed with a selection process to choose the most interesting and relevant to apply.  David Boloker is scheduled to be in Israel in June, and this visit will be used for a “kick-off” event to create excitement and provide information to the Israeli companies. 

This event differs from a typical industry show or investor conference in that the participation is based on a pre-event matching procedure.

• A Web 2.0 tool developed by Atlanta company E-Chainreaction will be used to facilitate the discussion and some of the processes leading to the event.
• With the help of industry experts, generate a draft list of emerging technologies that are of significant interest.
• Identify a gross prospect list of Israeli and Southeast-based emerging companies, and categorize according to the targeted technologies.
• Identify a target list of US organizations that would have an interest in the targeted technologies.
• US organizations are asked to identify technology areas of interest and to pre-select, from the prospect list, the emerging technology companies that they would like to meet with at the event.
• Emerging companies are requested to specify which major US organizations they would like to see, and are included on the prospect list presented to the US companies.
• The top twenty emerging companies (15 from Israel and 5 from the Southeast US) that emerged through the matchmaking will do short presentations at the event to be followed by pre-arranged one-on-one meetings. 
• At the event, opportunity is given to arrange additional meetings.
• Keynote presentations and panel discussions by top industry leaders, analysts and subject matter experts from academia and networking receptions are woven in-between the technology presentations and one-on-one meetings.
• Optional Break-Out Visit to Client Locations: Emerging companies would visit the major participating IBM clients at their corporate locations.  This may expose the companies to high level client executives who cannot participate in a two-day event.  Potential companies to visit are the three major IBM integrated accounts (Coca-Cola, UPS and Home Depot), SunTrust Bank, and Cox Communications (News Media and AutoTrader.com) in particular

Israel is one of the world’s most dynamic sources for high tech companies and with original and cutting edge technologies, particularly in the field of Web 2.0 and information technology.  The country has produced over 4,000 start-ups in the past few years, and has a robust venture capital industry to support entrepreneurs.  Excluding the US, Israel has more companies publicly traded on the US exchanges than any other country.  Virtually every major US technology company has development operations in Israel or investments in Israeli companies including IBM, Motorola, Cisco, Google, Yahoo, Intel, Microsoft, HP, and more.  BIRD, a joint US-Israel foundation, supports joint venture R&D projects between American and Israeli companies.

The US has the world’s largest economy and is the premier software and Web 2.0 solutions market. Atlanta (GA) is a major center for Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, UPS, Home Depot and has major presence of Software giants such as IBM, Cisco and more.  Through Georgia Tech, the industry has access to state support and academic research resources for major corporations and emerging companies.