Last Monday, together with Guy, my father, I attended a fascinating conference at the National Assembly, on this Arab spring which looks down on the change of seasons, as it began almost a year ago (in the middle of winter). The crazy events in this area took place exactly at a time when Pentalog (IT services company) was finally considering entering this new culture.
Everybody is thinking of the fall of Gaddafi, so easily achieved in the end. One may wonder why nobody did it at the time of UTA’s DC10 or of Lockerbie. There were even more legitimate reasons to act in those days, as there were real acts of war against the West. At the same time last year, who would have thought that NATO would declare war on Libya several months later or that Egyptian prosecutors would ask for the death sentence for Mubarak? Here we are; this acceleration and possible extension of the Arab spring raises questions for every potential investor in the MENA region.

All the important people who attended the event, experienced investors, ambassadors, but also Jean-Paul Betbèze (Senior Economist for Crédit Agricole), Pascal Boniface from IRIS, Nicolas Sarkis (director of Arab Petroleum Research Center), Christophe Lecourtier (executive director of Ubifrance), Hervé de Charrette (Chirac’s Minister of Foreign Affairs), have, I think, raised this issue.

The situation in Arab countries ranges from a high level of control in Morocco to total confusion in Egypt, or even more so in Yemen. And what is the future of immobile regimes such as in Saudi Arabia or Qatar? The latter is on everyone’s lips and seems to be the focus of all the political observers’ comments. The Islamic parties, such as Enhada in Tunisia or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, would be the instruments of a political and diplomatic machine (some say it is a Mafia organization) the commanders of which could be in Doha, London and Washington.
In short, there are many reasons for us to think this is far from over, or even not so spontaneous.

Whatever the case may be about Tunisia, we were all surprised by this revolution without a leader. It wasn’t religious and not even Pan-Arabian! Better still, it gave birth to a fantastic progress: the first transparent and democratic elections. The still flimsy tourism sector accounts for the lowest levels of foreign exchange reserves, while the exports of goods and services are on the increase. Even better, the petrol price maintained at high levels because of regional instability has enabled Tunisian textile products to regain market shares against China, as the route is shorter to European markets. As a result, this nice country hasn’t even entered recession in 2011!

Finally, there is reassuring news for investors regarding Maghreb. Couldn’t Moderate Islamist parties, which have gained new importance, be compared with Christian Democratic parties, which have gained importance in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Wall? Why should this be too far-fetched? After all, Ennahdha seems to be of liberal orientation regarding the economic sector. The leaders keep on praising the qualities of British liberalism! It is highly unlikely that company executives should dislike such a speech ! Furthermore, practically all the speakers supported the idea that the French media have overreacted to the arrival of religious parties. These countries, just as the Far East slightly before it, simply turns the page from Western omnipotence while attempting to lay down the founding rules of a new civil Islam, in a dialog on an equal footing on commercial, political and diplomatic issues with the Judeo-Christian West. Why not?

The first weeks of 2012 have been very intense and do not seem anything like a regular start of the year. For instance, in January, production has not registered the slump to which IT services departments are so accustomed during this month when annual renewals are long coming. This year, January will be a month of high production. On the other hand, we are witnessing a high degree of anxiety in many clients. So, we are not envisaging the intense period of newbiz that we experienced in Q1 2011, even if we are expecting some confirmations to this effect. Also, several of our customers have lowered their business volumes with us. One has left us, a small-scale one though. Fortunately, this is not the attitude of the majority of our clients. Quite the contrary, our forecast for Q1 is rather of a strong growth thanks to those who have increased their demands for Pentalog’s services. It is thus difficult to see the forthcoming evolution.
In addition, there are the new very high-scale demands which I announced in December. We are thus remaining very prudent on one of the giant businesses on which we are working at the moment. If it is concluded, we could reach, as I already mentioned, around 1,000 employees in 2012. The first option that we have already signed for this client does not guarantee yet the implementation of this large project.
As you can see, making forecasts in such a period is not simple at all. Monica shall deliver this tricky task in the following few days.

2012 is set to be a year in which new opportunities start to rise for IT professionals. Let’s see what other subjects we have in the IT offshore press review this week. Enjoy!

- How to cope with HTML5’s dueling standards bodies (January 17, 2012, Computer World)
- Need an agile infrastructure? Do your homework (January 16, 2012, Computer World)
- Tips for Facebook Timeline apps: Beware what you share (January 21, 2012, IT World)
- Wall Street Beat: Enterprise spending helps mixed quarter for tech (January 20, 2012, IT World)
- Public sector IT staff sees largest cut in 25 years (January 19, 2012, Computer Weekly)
- Four key trends in business analytics in 2012 (January 17, 2012, Computer Weekly)
- Innovation’s dirty little secret (January 17, 2012, Computer Weekly)
- The cloud is forked (January 22, 2012, ZDNet)
- 5 signs SOA has morphed into cloud (January 19, 2012, ZDNet)
- The Mobile Enterprise: Killing IT’s Sacred Cows (January 19, 2012, CIO)
- 4 Consumer Technologies That Could Change Your Enterprise (January 19, 2012, CIO)
- 2012: Year of Fast Changes for IT Professionals (January 17, 2012, CIO)
- Cloud Activity to Explode in 2012 (January 18, 2012, CIO)
- Cloud Computing bleibt auch 2012 eine Baustelle (January 23, 2012, CIO)
- BI, mobile Computing und die Cloud beschäftigen CIOs weltweit (January 19, 2012, IT Magazine)
- IKT-Branche erholt sich (January 19, 2012, Silicon)
- Cloud und mobile IT sind die Top-Themen (January 18, 2012, Automotive IT)
- Konzerne wollen IT-Dienstleistung aus einer Hand (January 17, 2012, CIO)
- West-Ost-Gefälle: Wechselkursprognose 2012 (January 19, 2012, Industrie Magazin)

Behind this title which is meant to be a trifle intriguing, I would like to tackle two current topics of interest. First, there is the buzz of the moment caused by the launch of offers by the French mobile network operator Free. Second, our contract signed with our current mobile operator (Orange) is coming to an end.

The first issue refers to the recent launch of the first mobile offer by Free. As you all know it, Free has created a buzz by putting forward a €19.99 offer including unlimited calls to 40 destinations, unlimited SMS/MMS and 3Go of fair-use (not unlimited, but still not bad at all), and a second offer at €2 consisting of 1h of calls and 60 SMS. One can really see the willingness of Free (together with its charismatic CEO, Xavier Niel) to turn the unacceptable into something intolerable. Seeing that it is possible to have rates as low as 2 euro cents / min for mobile communication and 1 euro cent / SMS, one can easily understand how the three main operators manage to make such high profits on these activities. For a long time now, operators have chosen package/bundle offers in order to make it easy to read the price list. However, “Conceiving a comprehensive and illegible offer allows to earn a large profit margin”, as I read a great marketer explain. Free is staking on the idea of transparency (separating the mobile device from the subscription price, low prices for calls not included in the package,…) and they are right. Do we have to fear Free’s offers? We have to let their new services start up (too much inflow may immediately reduce the quality of the offer) but the offer is still intelligent and transparent. However, I would like to emphasize a strength that other operators won’t be able to invoke:
- for each incoming call on a mobile device, the operator collects a fee. Free is counting on this bonanza generated by the first 3 million customers to fund its offers, but at least, it does not do so in order to increase its profit margins.
For those who want to know more:
- On refait le mac (my favourite weekend TV show): See the video (in French only). Sunday morning, for a post on Saturday morning, the number of viewers exceeded 42,000.
- A mobile customer calls SFR, in order to find out more see the video (in French only).

Explanations are very limited! Competitors are panic-stricken.
But if operators complain because of data-guzzling users, they themselves have been gorging themselves on profit.

The second item on my agenda is the coming to term of the 24 month contract that our IT outsourcing company signed with Orange for mobile services. Are we going to migrate to Free? Obviously, it is not forbidden, but it won’t be our option for the time being. For various reasons:
- Free is not primarily meant to customize its offers for companies as it targets individual users who are sick of being tricked into committing to contracts.
- As I mentioned before, it is advisable to take a global view on the situation in order to better ponder over it.
- We have to see how the mobile offer works given that Free has a “Best effort” approach while companies expect commitment.
We have seen MVNOs appear where their niche activities are difficult and which are, in the same time, focused towards individual users. With the emergence of MVNEs (companies that provide package mobile services for new MVNEs), within the following months we will witness the introduction of far more competitive offers targeting companies: voice and especially the convergence with company data (4G). It seems certainly likely to bring forward comprehensive offers around cloud services. Therefore, changing “habits” turns out to be too soon. Pentalog shall re-sign the contract with Orange for 24 months.

Let’s come back to these 24 months. In January 2010, I explained our reasons to choose this particular operator. The analysis for the first 9 months of 2011 in terms of our consumer practices is as follows:
- Voice + Data Roaming = 54% of the budget
- The largest consumer stands for 48% of the budget (everybody will guess to whom I am referring)
- There is a strong variability in terms of consumption at Pentalog level (voice & data – France & International).
- Subscriptions represent 12% of the budget
- The “internal numbers” option stands for 6400 min, the budget is consumed.

There is little request for change:
- Increase in service use by the project directors and the marketing of Virtual Fanatic (active participation on social networks)
- We are stopping 3G USB keys for some, as they are rarely used, which makes it better to pool share them

What were we able to improve with this renewal?
- Project directors (and Virtual Fanatic) shall be given a 3GS 8Go Iphone(extremely cheap while remaining fully operational). Some have mentioned the introduction of iPhone Nano (low cost iPhone). With this generation, Apple succeeds in offering low cost products. This device is a high compromise in order to gain a strong position with companies and have a homogenous offer in order to enhance customer service.
- Those who did not opt for change at this point can make it later in case of failure of their device or with a new generation of terminals (for instance).
- We are going to relaunch an internal communication campaign aiming at enhancing the use of our iPhone application. With a budget exceeding 100 euros per month including calls abroad from France, we should be able to reduce this budget from 4 to 5 by accepting to wait a few seconds longer during the call.
- Orange made a significant effort in terms of roaming rates (enough to be underlined)
- Orange accepted to reduce the range of options included in the iPhone package (less SMSs, no more TV or visual voice mail options). Such reduction serves its purpose.
- The adjustment of the budget allowing (without limitations) for the activation/deactivation of options in order to suit our consumer habits (avoiding the permanent activation of an international function) through the portal.

In terms of data usage, I prepared the possibility to use the 3G connection sharing (available on 4G iPhone), but the price of the option and the fact that it is not available in roaming are the reasons why only our Romanian colleagues shall use this option (free of charge) from Orange Romania. In Pentalog, by using Orange in France, the Republic of Moldova, Romania and Vietnam, I can acknowledge what I was saying in 2010 in this line: “We have no interest in using Orange WorldWide”.

I consider the SFR offer interesting. However, its package approach does not suit us in the end. It was cheaper by a few euros per month, but it didn’t compensate for the cost of change management.

Within a constant scope and usage, we could estimate that we will reduce our telecommunication budget by 15% to 20% and even more provided we adapt the options to our needs.

It’s a new week, it’s a new IT offshore press review. We start with 2 articles on the cool stuff seen at CES 2012. Enjoy!

- Cool stuff from CES 2012 (January 12, 2012, Computer World)
- Scenes from CES 2012 (January 13, 2012, Computer World)
- IT shockingly misaligned with the business it supports (January 13, 2012, Computer Weekly)
- Facebook set to reach a billion members (January 13, 2012, Computer Weekly)
- Cloud solves IT innovation and maintenance imbalance (January 11, 2012, Computer Weekly)
- India OKs censoring Facebook, Google, Microsoft, YouTube (January 13, 2012, ZDNet)
- Indonesia, Vietnam favorable investment hotspots (January 12, 2012, ZDNet Asia)
- How to Retool Your IT Skills for the Cloud (January 12, 2012, CIO)
- 5 Tips to Keep IT Outsourcing on Track as Global Providers Cut Staff (January 13, 2012, CIO)
- From now on, in Europe, everything gets worse (January 16, 2012, Market Watch)
- Drei Prozent Wachstum im Jahr 2011 (January 11, 2012, Manager Magazin)
- 6 wichtige IT-Trends für 2012 (January 13, 2012, CIO)
- 12 Outsourcing-Trends für 2012 (January 13, 2012, CIO)
- 6 IT-Trends bis 2032 (January 13, Computer Woche)
- Cloud-Einsatz im Mittelstand steigt (January 13, 2012, Silicon)
- Was bringt das IT-Jahr 2012? (January 11, 2012, Computer Woche)

It was indeed one of the key functions of the Pentalog Group’s website galaxy and one of our main differentiating aspects in the context of the transparency policy introduced in 2008 with our first free download services catalog. Nothing is ever perfect, but we have thus unified our pricing practices, and pricing on a case-by-case basis, as all consultancy and outsourcing businesses usually do, has never been practiced by Pentalog.

We are equally aware of the fact that, thanks to this practice, we have brought our contribution to structuring offshore prices in Europe, North Africa and the Far East. Many of our competitors used this system to check their prices and adapt them according to the scale of our IT outsourcing company. In this respect, we have played a special commercial role, even ethical. Downloading the catalog and using the estimate generator have amounted to 1,500 visits per month only for these functionalities!

But, our work has been accomplished by now, the offer is mature, and we now wish to provide such transparency to our “real” customers, partners and prospects only. In fact, our sites have been continuously copied in particular, but not only by British, Romanian and Tunisian companies for some time. They have systematically copied our services: offer design, recruitment, commercialization and pricing processes, etc.

Therefore, we have created a very user-friendly Web2.0 space which will enable us to control the distribution of our higher value contents and to deliver our quotations, to manage project and client-teams, contracts, etc. Based on electronic document management, it will also be equipped with conversational features close to those existing on professional social networks.

Thus, in the coming days, our good old price catalog will be available again in PDF format and it may be downloaded by real customers, partners and prospects, with real identities checked via our services portal. There are also contract models, ISO-compliant quality assurance plans , our future white papers, as well as the updates of all our project documents.

So, please pay attention, this space has already been open for all the aspects related to project management for existing customers and a few prospects. But, starting with next week, we are going to launch our updated price catalog which contains no fewer than 25 new services and competence types. In the following weeks, there will be summaries of Project Quality Plans, the services catalog and the training sessions provided by Pentalog Institute, the offshore white paper, then those related to e-commerce and embedded systems, etc. All these launches will be announced beforehand on our blogs, social networks and newsletters, and they will be available to all those who do not simply call themselves website looters.

It is a fact that most of us hesitate when it comes to turning to a 100% mobile (online) world, as up to now fares have been really high. And, while we hesitate, all the related services fail to take off. Once we receive attractive offers (Thank you Mr Niel ), we’ll most likely have fewer scruples about taking the leap: 3G tablets, 3G ultra-light laptops, etc. Thus, we could be connected “full time” to social networks, to our company’s information systems (IS), to objects (M2M), etc.

The attractiveness of mobile prices will be reflected on full data offers in the field of connected objects (M2M or Machine to machine), which will eliminate the last but one obstacle to M2M take off: its price.

Why did I say “the last but one obstacle”?
Just because the last obstacle is the scope of its use.
It is not enough to be connected to an IS, the information must be “contextualized” depending on the user who looks at it. There mustn’t be any additional effort to find the information, to use it together with others and to process it. The connection must benefit its productivity and work performance.

Let’s look at it by using an example: an electricity meter sets back its index in an IS of a company in charge of the building where the meter is placed. The IS has integrated the information in the BI device database.
In fact, one cannot know if there is a consumption peak until the facilities manager or the production manager (for factories) does not log in to the BI device (or, at best, to the intranet).
The “practical” benefit would be that the information is analyzed by the IS within the building’s production chain (automatically), translated in simple terms and posted on the social network and on the wall:

– for the facilities manager: “Current electricity over-consumption due to production increase: for more details, click on the following link.”
– for the production manager: “Production growth has lead to an increase in electricity consumption: for more details, click on the following link.”
– for the commodity manger: “Production growth has lead to an increase in electricity consumption. Given the production forecasts for the following 3 months, you should consider renegotiating the contract with the electricity supplier: for price simulations, click on the following link.”

Does this look like a dream come true?
It is not a dream, but the reality we can nowadays achieve with the means (software and hardware) available to us and at reasonable prices.

In 2011, Pentalog has taken the extraordinary initiative to invite all the employees who started working for the company in 2005 and a few outstanding employees who joined the company after this date to take part in an unprecedented event. Together, these employees have acquired 92% of the capital belonging to one of the most flourishing IT companies in Europe! All the participants invested in the company’s share capital by buying shares at their 1993 price! This unprecedented operation has enabled about 20 more people to attend the General Assembly. The dividend paid several months later granted them a 50% “refund” of their investment! Obviously, shareholding situations are eventually different from one another, as several employees hold less than 0.5% of the capital (however, this amounts to a theoretical value between €100,000 and €200,000) and I have reached 28%. But that’s the spirit! Certain people have cashed several thousand euro since their first participation. I am very proud of this operation which makes Pentalog stand out from other companies, in developing countries and elsewhere. In my view, there is no concrete way to better reward company loyalty. The company founders felt great joy on this occasion!

Welcome to the IT offshore press review. I think we should start with this question: do we really need new programming languages? Have you heard of Dart, Ceylon, Go, #F, Opa, Fantom or Zimbu? It’s just like people are trying to reinvent the wheel. But let’s see what are these new languages and then we will continue with our other subjects. Enjoy!

- 10 programming languages that could shake up IT (January 3, 2012, IT World)
- Bart Perkins: Is social connectivity friend or foe to corporations? (January 6, 2012, Computer World)
- UK IT professionals face nearshore competition (January 6, 2012, Computer Weekly)
- Gartner: Enterprise software spending to rise by 6.4% in 2012 (January 5, 2012, Computer Weekly)
- IT industry attacks plans to ditch GCSE work experience (January 6, 2012, Computer Weekly)
- CES Unveiled reveals little about tech in 2012 so far (January 8, 2012, ZDNet)
- 2012 Tech Startups to Watch Product Sampler (January 5, 2012, CIO)
- U.S. Report Sees Perils to America’s Tech Future (January 6, 2012, CIO)
- 7 Signs You’ve Outsourced Too Much to IT Service Providers (January 6, 2012, CIO)
- Wo sich Deutschlands Zukunft entscheidet (January 3, 2012, Wiwo)
- Die neuen BI-Herausforderungen (January 9, 2012, Computer Woche)
- Outsourcing ändert sich massiv (January 5, 2012, CIO)
- ERP schwach – CRM boomt (January 3, 2012, Computer Woche)
- 8 Beziehungstipps fürs Outsourcing (January 3, 2012, Computer Woche)
- Was aus Outsourcing-Trends wurde (January 5, 2012, CIO)

Welcome to the first IT offshore press review of 2012. Enjoy!

- 2012 tech predictions: From IDG’s editors worldwide (December 30, 2011, Computer World)
- Cloud computing changes everything (December 23, 2011, Computer World)
- Five open source technologies for 2012 (December 28, 2011, Computer World)
- Top 10 social media stories of 2011 (December 30, 2011, Computer Weekly)
- Top 10 outsourcing stories of 2011 (December 22, 2011, Computer Weekly)
- 2012: Nine business tech predictions (January 3, 2012, ZDNet)
- Words and expressions I want banned in 2012 (December 28, 2011, ZDNet)
- 12 IT Outsourcing Predictions for 2012 (December 22, 2011, CIO)
- Polen sind die Gründerkönige der deutschen Wirtschaft (December 29, 2011, Welt)
- Die IT-Trends 2012 (December 30, 2011, Silicon)
- Die 6 meistgefragten IT-Jobs 2012 (December 29, 2011, CIO)
- Trotz Krise steigen die IT-Budgets leicht an (December 28, 2011, Silicon)
- Cloud Computing etabliert sich nur langsam (December 27, 2011, Automotive IT)