The Israeli Cabinet is set to vote today on a radical initiative set forth by Shai Agassi, the demigod-hero of many Israeli entrepreneurs, to revolutionize the Israeli transportation infrastructure. The proposal calls for the creation of "an entire electrically powered system for cars, starting with solar energy, non-polluting electric vehicles and infrastructure to charge the cars -- all without dependence on oil."

Agassi's meteoric rise from the halls of the Israeli-M.I.T., Technion University, to the board rooms of global software conglomerate, SAP (NYSE: SAP), has been an inspirational story to a country chock-full of entrepreneurs. Agassi founded TopTier Software (originally called Quicksoft Development) in Israel in 1992. SAP acquired Agassi's company in April 2001 and Agassi was tapped for responsibility over the strategy of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software leader. Agassi recently left SAP to strike out on his own.

According to the Ha'aretz article, the cabinet's blessing will mean tax breaks, among other positives. Purchase tax on standard gasoline and diesel vehicles is 84%, which will drop to 79% on January 1. For more environmentally friendly hybrids the rate is only 30%, according to the article.

All we've been hearing lately about Microsoft relates to wars - Internet wars with Google and Yahoo, hardware/operating system war with Apple, and a legal war with the European Commission.  Bet you'd like to see Microsoft learn to play nice and maybe work with competitors rather than constantly be spending money on a battle.

Well, Microsoft is getting its feet wet with how to play nice - - releasing its first joint venture product with SAP.  The project started as "Menocino," with the goal of developing software that would give customers the ability to access SAP through Microsoft Office.  The two companies are jointly releasing a new product called "Duet."  You can find out more about Duet at an informational website launched jointly.

Not only have they worked together to develop the new software, they're going to market and support it jointly starting with customer briefing events next month.  The product will be released in June, if it stays on schedule.  Some customers have been testing the software since December and about 100 more will join the test this week, according to Shai Agassi, president of SAP's product and technology group.

The big question is how will this affect Microsoft Dynamics, which competes with SAP?