Magic Software Hires a New Chief Executive

Published: March 26, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Magic Software Enterprises, a provider of application and integration software for midrange platforms, said last week that it has hired a new president and chief executive officer in the wake of a restructuring that it underwent last year.

David Assia, who is chairman of the company's board and who has been acting CEO since that restructuring last October, announced that Eitan Naor has been hired to fill those two roles at the company. Naor was previously president and CEO at ECtel, an Israeli supplier of integrated revenue management software, which detects fraud and does credit risk assessment as well as Sarbanes-Oxley compliance requirements for transactions. Naor has been at ECtel for three years and has worked for the Israeli operations of Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and Amdocs. He will begin his job at Magic Software in July.

"After three years with the company, I felt that I needed a change and asked the board to step down and pursue new opportunities," Naor explained in a statement. "I will be leaving behind me a company I am very proud of. ECtel has emerged from a few very challenging years as a growing company with a clear leadership position and excellent prospects."

This situation, of course, is exactly what Magic Software is hoping to repeat. "I am delighted that we have attracted a person of Eitan's caliber and vision to lead our company through this period of transformation," said Assia. "I strongly believe that his leadership will enable us to achieve our growth and profitability goals."

Naor comes aboard Magic Software as it has managed to return to profitability--however slight. In the fourth quarter, the company reported sales of $16.2 million, up 8 percent, bringing $30,000 to the bottom line. That was considerably better than the $3.53 million loss it had in the prior year's fourth quarter.

Magic Software also announced it is donating $1 million worth of software to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which was last year designated by IBM as a hub for innovation for the System i platform as part of the Academic Initiative for System i program. IBM and UNL professors are working jointly to create training materials for the System i platform, and it is obviously a good thing to have the professors who are writing course materials using your products if you are trying to sell them to the students who will be the future programmers and managers in i5/OS shops.

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