Computerwoche, a famous German IT magazine, has just published a very interesting article on the nearshore outsourcing policy of the NHS doctors’ Union in the Land of Bavaria (”Kassenärtzliche Vereinigung Bayerns”), an organization with more than 2,500 employees and 22,000 members. The Romanian service provider mentioned in this article is Pentalog! A team of four members with a German-speaking team leader, all based in Sibiu, have been working for this client for a couple of months already.

Here is an unofficial summarized translation of the article…

Nearshoring : KVB has found help in Eastern Europe

It’s been 6 months since KVB decided to outsource part of its developments to Romania and Poland. The CIO explains this as a reaction to the need of improving their flexibility and agility. “Our needs are two times bigger than what our internal competences allow us to accomplish. In the past, we have appealed to German partners to help us surpass this problem. But we had to cut down costs”. KVB was looking for a solution that would not only lead them to make savings, but also allow their employees to focus on high-level tasks in their core business.

Nearshoring rather than Offshoring

The possibility of an offshore solution was quickly put aside, because it seemed very difficult to work with people from another continent, given the branch specificity and terminology. “The time difference might have been a problem, which could have lead to an increase in our overhead costs”.

The situation is Europe is different. The geographical and cultural proximity greatly eases communication, but the linguistic barrier remains. In order to avoid mis-interpretations, we have decided to use only German within the project. “This may sound a bit unusual, but it is the only satisfactory solution for us”, the development manager explains .
The terms of the German health system are very specific, the legal texts are nationally “customized”, and they only exist in German language, concerning only professionals working in Germany. “It was obvious that communication in English would have driven to many errors and approximations. Certain words would have been impossible to translate”.

However, German-speaking collaborators are not easy to find, not even in Eastern Europe. The market is highly competitive, we have to fight against multinational companies that employ all engineers on the spot.

In order to limit the risks, KVB has decided to split the projects between two countries: one service provider in Romania and one in Poland. “A polish IT engineer costs us EUR 50/hour, but we expect him to speak German and to bring an expertise in architecture. In Romania he costs us EUR 25/hour, so we are less demanding. For now only the team leader speaks German and the rest of the team communicates in English. This is enough for the technical part of the project. The team leader translates wherever necessary and this works fine.”

Finding the right partners

The size of the company was a main criterion when choosing the service providers. “It is important to communicate with our partners on the same level; the company has to be able to support our growth. Having the opportunity to act on the choice of team members, by conducting together individual meetings, was also decisive. This way we would make sure the service provider allocates us the most suited persons. ”

For the CIO of KVB, long-term project planning and building partner and worker loyalty play an important role. At the beginning of the project, KVB has invited the Romanian and Polish teams to Germany for one or two weeks, so that they integrate with the team in Munich and become acquainted with the necessary project-related information. “We have thought about keeping one nearshore team member at our location throughout the entire project, but travel and accommodation expenses would have nibbled away our outsourcing savings. Still this would not have been very useful in the end, as communication between Germany and the nearshore premises works really well.

Internal tensions

“At the beginning our employees were really skeptical. To them the foreign workforce seemed threatening for the success of the project. But at the same time they were aware that we needed additional resources”, recalls the development manager. KVB based its strategy on an open internal communication that would dispel these fears.

The importance of communication

“Project managers were afraid that communication with the virtual team might not work. These fears were well-founded, considering the high agility level we require. Their perceptions were then swept away: deliveries came on time and the nearshore members came up with new impulses in the projects. The German personnel is very pleased with the results; they even demand the participation of the nearshore teams in other projects”, says the development manager. “This is an opportunity for them to acquire the necessary knowledge in the context of globalization”. Managing relationships with multiple service providers develops additional competences. “A nearshore project does not mean less work; on the contrary it implies higher demands. The new tasks are more diversified and bring about more responsibilities.” This is what motivates the personnel.

Positive results

KVB has now gained some experience and even though there are certain adjustments to be made, the results are encouraging. “We can already see the positive effects of this collaboration and we will probably reach the nearshore objectives set for the end of 2009”, highlights the DSI. In the upcoming months, Romanian and Polish specialists must intervene in other domains, such as datawarehouse development and the teams should reach a number of 10 members in each country. The CIO concludes: “We believe that the current projects will lead to a long-term collaboration”.

The first magical moments, the first steps in Asia, the first tropical impressions. I can feel it from the beginning: this trip will resemble no other. My feelings are so strong and I have the strange impression that here I am going to find something I never looked for and that I am never going to let go of it.

The minutes pass and so are my fingers over my keyboard. I enjoy all these surprising images that struck my retina and also my lungs. I feel the warm humidity deep in my throat even if it is only 6 a.m. Still, Fred tells me that this time it’s cooler than the last time. I feel the tropical scents, the smell of all these mopeds I have heard about, that pass by like some mechanical river. The locals never stop, always on their small mopeds; the traffic is always acceptable. They infiltrate everywhere, but without any aggressiveness. Practically, no vehicle runs over 50k/h.

Afterwards, we had a series of meetings: companies, universities, students and our first intern! Fred will tell you more about him in another post.

In other words, I haven’t felt the shock in a negative way.

I was very impressed by the VNU (Vietnam National University), by the quality of its technical platform, the tidiness, the condition and the design of its buildings. All this is far different from the decay I am used to in the Eastern European Universities, where I have studied, taught and that I currently work with. What about the meeting with the students? I have been told they will be practically mute. The truth is that they have asked dozens of questions about our internships and our projects in Vietnam.

See, I expected a shock but it did not happen. Perhaps it will, but later. For now, all I can say is that life in Saigon has a very special flavour. Those who know Fred, may imagine that it won’t take long for him to find the best places to experience the local lifestyle. Well, believe me, there are many possibilities. We ate Nems with foie gras, lobster ravioli, scrambled eggs with truffles, sautéed tournedos garnished with foie gras and tuna, sublime wines from Burgundy and Rhone, raspberry millefeuille, a 5-dish variation of beef. In one of the three excellent restaurants we ate at, we have paid less than for a pizza and a beer in a restaurant in Colentina, Bucharest! For a two-star restaurant, according to Michelin guide, that is to say something that does not event exist in Bucharest! But in Saigon there are plenty. In my next post, I will tell you about the local cuisine and about my new friends, the spices. Those who know me know that I would leave the table if someone plays with a pepper.

What can I say about the Caravelle bar situated at the 9th floor of a building as old as the French colony, which overlooks a little bit the dome of the building occupied by Louis Vuitton. A real cocktail of France, saffron, warm rain and city lights …

We are now in Hanoi, where I am going to spend many months next year. I’d like to thank Frédéric for reviewing this post.

After several months of benchmarking, Pentalog’s Board of Directors has decided that Vietnam would be the company’s third offshore location. Pentalog, belonging to the top 30 of European nearshorers, was attracted by the association of a growing demography and a fast-improving higher education system. The authorities’ strong commitment to develop a leading edge technology stands out against the current decline in Ukraine and Russian province cities. And Morocco still does not seem to keep its promises regarding the practice of foreign languages (Pentalog acted in 7 countries in 2008) and the number of educated engineers.

The launch of the Vietnamese project was entrusted to Monica Jiman, the Eastern Europe Vice President, manager of the Bucharest office and in charge of operations and business development there since 4 years. Monica will transfer the Pentalog way of working to Tuan Nguyen Quoc, who has been chosen to manage the Hanoi agency. Tuan Nguyen Quoc has a Master’s Degree from Paris Dauphine. He is an English-speaker. Monica Jiman, who graduated from the University of Orleans, will spend 6 months in Hanoi. Pentalog will also rely on its Romanian and French project managers and developers to ensure the project’s consistency with quality standards of the group.

Pentalog Vietnam is integrated into Pentalog’s Right Cost policy, which was launched 9 years ago, and brings the company its first « extreme low cost » capacity. Vietnam is probably the most competitive country in the world in terms of quality-price ratio. We will probably hire 50 Vietnamese active team members before the end of 2009. With 25 employees in France, 260 in Romania-Moldova and 50 in Vietnam, Pentalog should be able to offer the best cost-ratio available in Western Europe (92% of the team members are based offshore-nearshore). Many additional cooperations relying on the Romanian hub should be launched in the following months.

Frédéric Lasnier, Pentalog CEO quickly describing the objectives of this project: “to offer the Pentalog service quality, meet our clients’ growing needs, set up our training programme, with a price of EUR 100/day for a dedicated team, in other words a 40% discount to our average rates”.

Hanoi! On Friday the board of Directors decided that Pentalog would open its next office in the Vietnamese capital city. Several factors influenced this decision:

- the Asian location will complete the group’s marketing position
- it will bring additional benefits in terms of production costs compared to Ukraine and Romania
- Vietnam enjoys great political stability
- Hanoi disposes of a very good education system and is less glutted than Ho Chi Minh City
- the country has understood the importance of having very well-organized high level academic courses, all over its territory, through international partnerships
- Vietnam already has 3 investment poles of great interest for our future development.

About this last point, I believe that a second Pentalog office will be set up in the near future in Ho Chi Minh City. I am expecting it for the the beginning of 2009. Ho Chi Minh will also remain a luxury alternative in case of difficulties with our office in Hanoi. Of course we are definitely not closing the door to Ukraine, a country that is so close to us, but we consider that the Ukrainian people must urgently solve their political and financial problems if they want to attract new investors. I cannot expand in a country that hinders circulation of capital and has shut its eyes for 2 years to the crisis that was obviousls threatening it.

Back to our Vietnam project, we are going to get back in touch with the persons we met, the persons we have been talking to and those we are going to recruit…

Our second day in Odessa…

I took the liberty to resume Fred’s first impressions about Odessa and also to state my own ideas about this second day of our trip.

The second day at the Odessa University gives us a more optimistic picture. Anyway, I wasn’t 100% agreeing with Fred. As an ex-professor at a Romanian University I profoundly disagree with any discourse so unconnected to the students’ interests. Being a teacher, as any other job, implies sticking to the rules. In those labs we visited yesterday, we saw that the professors were involved and they were putting the students’ interest on top. Furthermore they express a highly international openness. Still, as I have already seen in some other Ukrainian cities, the linguistic skills are not sufficient. I mean the students’ skills, who don’t sufficiently manage international languages, which restricts international university inter-connection. Anyway, I admit that Ukraine has big potential.

While I was writing these lines, Serghei informed me that the Ukrainian financial system is about to go bankrupt (Petru is attending a mission in Kiev for an important bank). In theory, the banks stopped refunding deposits and no money leaves the country. This is one more reason to re-think our future strategy.

I arrived yesterday in Chisinau, just in time to meet one of our best clients for one hour and a half; I discover today the new flagship of our Eastern fleet! It looks really great. Take a look at the two pictures. It’s Saturday and there’s almost nobody here. But it’s spectacular, one of our best achievements. We can accommodate here 120 engineers and BPO operators without any trouble.

Before leaving tomorrow for Odessa, I took this morning a little tour at the wine festival. That was 3 years that I systematically missed it. Not very successful, no tasting of fine wines. Too bad for them, because I bought only 3 bottles, whereof one of Moldavian ice wine. Again, I took two pictures.

I have just returned from Vietnam and I already have planned another trip. This Friday I will be in Chisinau (Moldova) with one of our clients who wants to visit our office that he didn’t see yet. On Sunday, Serghei, Monica and I, we will go to the Black Sea coast, in Odessa, in order to make an in-depth analysis of the Ukrainian port capacities.

I couldn’t have waited to make this trip for several reasons. First, because the ideas clash into fertile “little big bangs”. I want to expose fresh ideas and then to announce which will be the next implantation of Pentalog on identical analysis bases. I’m sufficiently familiar with Ukraine at this moment. The strong points of these two competitors are extremely different:
- dispose of an Asian position or not
- proximity / change of continents
- cultural unity / cultural rupture
- 1h / 5h of time-lag
- 600€ / 500€
And finally there’s the sheer provocation, which is very important… I’m sure you’ll agree.

Photos from Hanoi

Vietnam Airlines tomorrow night.

First part of the trip - Ho Chi Minh City
Second part - Hanoi

Saturday, in Saigon, I learnt some interesting information. Cap Gemini has abandoned the idea of a large East-European site (Iasi has been strongly considered). But the salary evolution in Romania must have influenced their intention; to be continued… Another French company, who announced its opening in Vietnam, has, all in all, only a small dedicated team of 5 people, sold by one of the largest local IT services companies. I begin to wonder if the giant French IT services companies will successfully open their offshore locations.

Monday in Hanoi I found out that France Telecom plans to open a Technology Centre in Vietnam. The spot is hot!

What else? Oh, yes, the Vietnamese offshore works as the Indian or Romanian companies did ten years ago. The surplus seems to be widespread. And the managers are surprised to see the turn-over! This is not a good example. The best of them give up, while the average gets in a rut. The best company, we had the opportunity to visit, has a charging staff of half of the total. It is a widespread model and the owners of these companies hope to give to their employees a general training at the lowest cost. The result is awful, because away from retaining their staff, they give a wrong idea about the productivity. It’s not the proper thing to do. We have had this problem since 2000 in Romania. Today, if we want to reach Vietnam, we will demand the same productivity ratio.

It is obvious that if we confirm this location, in a few weeks, we will have to replicate the model of Pentalog “nursery”. The challenges of communication between the European management and the local work force will be very consistent. A company that does not succeed in breaking the ice with its Vietnamese team would have no chance in reaching the levels of communication essential to respect the quality in our profession. The cultural factors are clearly crucial when moving to a country still living with the concept of “generational classes” and that seem to still show a certain mark of respect to the white people.

We arrived in Hanoi on Saturday, very late at night. Sunday was a very, very calm day. No appointments, after 4 we had on Saturday in Saigon and afterwards the plane to Hanoi, I swam 1km in the huge pool of a luxurious hotel. The afternoon was entirely reserved to a long walk around the lake. Abundance of beautiful villas, some of which seem to have been uprooted from Deauville, while those beside you remind instead the Promenade of Englishmen … below a slum, from afar a pagoda reflected in a lake.

Hanoi has the charm of a provincial town increased by the architectural structure and effect of a capital. I just made a reservation at a restaurant which claims to have 1000 oenological references!

Both cities have decidedly different advantages – How can I tie?

The 5th day since we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City. It’s spectacular. Ho Chi Minh makes me feel the same as other major former colonial cities that I have encountered. Most of those cities have become sprawling monsters. Nearly 10 million people are busy night and day to run this mega-city. Sometimes I am absolutely blown.

You don’t have to go to Saigon to see something, because there’s « almost » nothing to see. We go to Saigon for the rush and the atmosphere: suffocation, fun, speed! The people of Saigon “are” the richness of the city. We must see them live, eat on their small stools in the streets, selling you certified copies and certificates of authenticity for replica watches (a treat for the gourmet salesman), see them on their motorcycle waiting for the green light, like at the Tour de France.

I love this city. It reminds me of others that have nothing in common. It’s true that as older I grow, as more I love the speed. If I stop here, I feel that we are going to get this speed.

We are moving and our planning is rich. I already see the criteria for a successful location. Everyone talks about the turn over, but we have seen others in the Balkans. It is certain that Ho Chi Minh is a two stages settlement: local and offshore. A city of 9M people will not remain just an offshore place. The question is how long will it take to make this link? Maybe we should combine (as Bucharest until 2006)?

At this time, what worries me the most, is the mobile operators difficulties (the interconnection doesn’t work for several hours each day and the “Edge” continuously disappears, this is bad. This reduces by half what we could do in mobile telephony, if we don’t have the opportunity to test it. The Internet seems somewhat less problematic… if we have at least 3 providers.

In terms of resources, I begin to believe.

To be continued…

Post office with the picture of Ho Chi Minh
Notre Dame Cathedral

This article was written on September 19th, I don’t know when it will be published.
This business trip does not have the same effect on me as the other-ones had. I may be a bit anxious about thinking of working so far from our headquarters, or perhaps it comes from all these bittersweet and even violent images that come to our minds when one says “Vietnam”, or “Indochina”? The word Vietnam generates inspiring imaginary thoughts and we do not remember if those come from our history books, from frightening movies, or from Marguerite Duras and her world made of worm rain and soft light filtering through bays.
The last few days before the trip I did not have any time to breathe and to prepare myself for what I expect to be a violent but positive shock. Yesterday I was busy in Frankfurt and in the 4 countries I went to in the last 3 weeks so I could not concentrate on my mental preparation. Virginie and Alex have got everything set for me. Virginie is still reading her documents and notes before landing. I am not. These lines I am writing are the ones that will help me preparing my mind for this first Asian experience.
But what am I looking for? Mircea asked me 10 times within a few hours in Frankfurt. I guess I didn’t know what to answer. “Because you are French!” he said. My father asked me the same question, some people from Pentalog certainly wonder about this but didn’t dare asking me, since I was so busy with the perspective of a new continental adventure.
After all, Pentalog’s low cost production system works better than most of the European software production companies and it probably offers one of the best quality-price ratios in the world. It looks like it has a bright future. I will go further than the classical answers about the research for competitiveness. I believe that each continent represents a mental territory in everyone’s mind. What I want to know is what I can build for you on your mental Asian territory. What I want to know is what your mental Asian territory, mine and reality have in common. And I will draw my personal conclusions from this. One of our clients, an amazing start-up company, has already stated its intention to join us in this project because, as its chairman said “our solutions are built on hardware produced in Asia and sold to Asian customers”, and “getting a bit of the Asian spirit will be good for us”. Apart from this trip, we will of course assess several things as we usually do and look for fruitful encounters, as we know how to do. And we talk about all this. Also, we will assess the common “synchronization” difficulties with Europe as well, I mean how fast we can get a plane ticket, how we can work with Orleans, Frankfurt, Romania and Moldova in optimal conditions. We have almost 2 weeks to get serious results and answers. In 99, when I went to Romania for the first time, I spent 8 days there and another 8 days 2 months later.
At the moment I am finishing this post, 20 minutes have passed since we flew over Rostov-on-Don. We are now heading towards the Caucasus, however the GPS is still showing Tbilissi and Georgia, which we are unlikely to fly over, but I am thinking of them. We are leaving the mountains to our right, as I thought. We are authorized to fly over Grozni, the ripped and pacified capital of Chechnya. Even Vietnam Airlines aircrafts must comply with the Pax Putina! There we are, our plane just entered the Central Asia twilight. I can still see the Caspian Sea under a steamy veil like the tulle behind the bays of Marguerite, who dreams and dreams.

All those who regularly check social networks such as Viadeo, Xing or Linkedin, could notice that I am actively looking for partners or collaborators on different levels to help us launch our Pentalog Asia project. We don’t have a strict schedule (since we are not quoted, thank God!). Let’s just say that we would like to have an office with 50 persons by the next 24 months in China or in Vietnam. We expect our team to quickly grow to several hundred people. For now we are gathering information and we are open to discussions. We are interested in meeting potential managers for Asia, juniors ready to move over there, members of Asian communities willing to link together the two sides of their lives and already established entrepreneurs.

So, do not hesitate to contact me, either via a comment on this blog or by email through Viadeo, Linkedin or Xing.

Based on a comparison between euro zone and dollar zone, this catalog presents 132 types of services, in fixed price as well as time & material mode. This is a true budget bible for IT service and BPO buyers.
From database administration to desktop publishing, software development, and a call centre, Pentalog offers a large range of services in two big monetary areas and according to several types of contratual frameworks.
This catalog meets Pentalog’s will to remain as transparent as possible about prices and services and therefore in its relationships with buyers and decision-makers.

2008 service and price catalog (1.7 Mo - PDF)

First visit at our office in Sibiu, where Manu has got us once again a ready-to-use building. The 350 square meter villa is very pleasant and perfectly matches our start-up spirit that goes along with moving in new premises. We decided to set up in this town the HQ of our “embedded systems” activities (we already have almost 50 employees in this field) and we have almost achieved our objectives. The presence of many German-speakers in Sibiu will allow us to benefit from an excellent communication level with German clients. On the operational level, we have just introduced our office and services from Sibiu to a very important client, belonging to the world’s elite in the field of low layer technologies for mobile phone. His feedback is excellent… to be continued. We already know that if everything works fine, we will have to find bigger offices in 7 to 10 months!

Besides probably being the nicest town in Romania, Sibiu has an international airport and is a prime target for investments in production as well as R&D (hundreds of people already work in embedded development there).

Every 3 months from now on, Pentalog will report its average daily prices for 3 categories of services. They will be issued one month after the end of the current trimester. Let’s have a look at the figures for the first quarter of 2008:
- Dedicated offshore teams (Romania + Moldavia): EUR 166,79
- Fixed price contracts: EUR 279,88
- On-site staffing in Western Europe: EUR 425,53

We will issue this price list on the blog. I think that the information about the BPO part is not yet going to be available… but why not in the future?
In my opinion, price transparency should be a concern for all the actors in our business area. This idea came to my mind while I was working on our catalogue. I wanted the client to be able to get a precise idea about our position in terms of prices, given the fact that I don’t know at this time any European offshore service provider who has reached our level of organization or intervention. 

It is everyone’s task then to set margin levels in accordance with the company’s policy and shareholders’ expectations.

The disclosure of these price indicators will be associated with a comment on market trends and the continuous evolution of our offer and position in our business area.

Right in the middle of the NATO summit in Bucharest (I am fed up with those noisy helicopters and traffic jams), which will determine if Ukraine and Georgia will become NATO members, I am wondering to what extent the accession to this alliance can influence the choice of an offshore destination.

I think that this depends on the subject. But for sure, for the aeronautics or defence sectors, this can matter. For several months, rumours about a possible military alliance in “the Eastern World”, between Russia, India and China have been going around. But some people deny them. Anyhow, since a certain time the positions of Russia and China have clearly aligned themselves, especially on the subject of oil supply of the world’s fastest growing economy, mainly coming from Iran, which is itself an important purchaser of Russian equipment and military technologies.

India’s position is slightly different, but above all less clear. Its dispute with Pakistan, a usual allied of Washington’s, makes this country totally unclassifiable for the moment.

Anyhow, this criterion only concerns aircraft and defence projects; the IT sector does not seem to be affected.

Two weeks ago, I took a two-day touch-and-go visit to Kiev.
The aim of the visit I took with my colleague Olivier (thank you for all the opportunities) was to assess local and offshore business opportunities.
Let us start with the offshore subject. The regulars of this blog will remember the short trip I took to Chernivtsi (in the Ukrainian area) a couple of months ago.
On reading my message, Dima who is proficient in French, English and German, told me I was wrong to doubt the multi-linguistic skills of Ukrainians. To be able to communicate with professors and students, without making use of Russian, we often had to use German… whenever it was possible.
Dima assured that my views would evolve on returning to Kiev (after a first trip in September 2004). Well, I admit that on this point my opinion did improve… a little. They are still far from the multi-lingual skills of Romanians, Moldovans, Hungarians … Their English sometimes remains quite inaccurate. But there are still opportunities for good projects, based on a strong social mark, opportunities that are able to attract the best elements… who are fluent in English.
Regarding local business, after some meetings, I can say that there exists an emerging market. But let us be careful, it is for international professionals only. Many companies, even world-wide companies, still remain at the stage of joint-ventures, with local management that is still strong. Business practices are therefore not standardized. The best way to enter such companies, without giving in to temptation and take ‘shortcuts’, is probably to focus on what local competition does not provide: business analysts, Business Intelligence experts, project managers…
So, still no conclusion for Pentalog, but an ever-improving perception.

I will not go into details about this visit since everybody knows that telling about potential business can bring bad luck .
But what I would like to mention, since it relates to my coming posts, is that this prospect was accompanied by an economic representative of the Swedish Embassy in Bucharest.
They were looking for two things: offshore production capacities and sourcing capacities for the local market in Stockholm.
As a French person, I was really surprised to see that the Swedish government helps their companies relocate services. They say it does not cause any problems at all. Given the current economic situation and the lack of resources the coutry has to cope with, the Swedish government considers it has to support companies in maximizing their output and develop their local added-value thanks to international subcontractors.
But I remember hearing Angela Mekel delivering the same speech to all German companies last year at the Cebit trade show.
Not everybody is so far yet… what do you think about it?

The export policy of Pentalog begins to bear fruit. It seems that the time when we used to simply take advantage of opportunities provided by trade fairs and partners is gone.
We can now assert that we are building up a true strategic movement. If everything happens as expected, Pentalog will soon announce new German-Austrian businesses (probably accounting for 6% of the sales figure in 2007, expected to increase to 10% in 2008). The sales volume coming from abroad (outside of France) would reach, according to this formula, approximately 20% of the group’s total sales. Up to 75% of production will be internationalized.
The two days spent in Munich, on the biggest annual IT trade fair in South Germany, made me notice that Pentalog’s German-oriented message has started to take roots even beyond German borders. It currently looks that Switzerland will soon become an operating area for Pentalog’s future projects.
If we manage to complete these various projects successfully, Pentalog will have the means and experience to maintain its growing policy and will start being considered one of the few real global actors in Europe.

This announcement is very typical for the company that has not understood anything about the Romanian labour market. Romania is no longer a traditional offshore platform. Recruiting 2000 engineers in Iasi is simply impossible. This announcement contradicts the overall capacity of the university and demography. They will dive head first in a real-estate precipe. They must be thinking they are in India!
Recruiting 2000 people in Romania is possible for Cap, no problem, but on 5 up to 10 regional platforms. The schema will be in accordance with the Romanian spirit, largely in love with individualism and loving being gossiped about. Most of these great set-ups fall prey to a bizarre turnover and are adorned with all kinds of moral crises in an output context that is rather average. Cap Gemini does not learn from the Romanian plans of Oracle (that will not have reached 1500 people – most of which not even after 5 years … in Bucharest), let alone those of Siemens or Continental, that, having invested in the province, have chosen to start several facilities (Brasov, Sibiu, Iasi and Timisoara)… That’s a bad perception I think. Cap will have to review their strategy … they have the time to recover.
For us, no worries, we are used to living together with Siemens in Brasov (500 people) … and we are the ones that are have been growing in this town .
And what is pleasing is the fact that Iasi will become famous in France, too.
As for us, we are 140 in Romania/Moldavia (and 25 in France), but on 4 sites. It’s not really comparable from a management point of view!