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Frédéric Lasnier, Mircea Popa (manager of Pentalog Deutschland) and I will therefore travel to Poland from the 20th to the 22nd of September. There we will be looking for German-speaking IT engineers, we are going to try to obtain information about IT university faculties, the main nearshore players etc. Contact us if you think you can help us.

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Ngo Bao Chau, an authentic Vietnamese name, was pronounced at Hyderabad in India last Wednesday (August 19th) as one of the four winners of the Fields medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics (we could say that this is the Nobel of mathematics). His works deal with the Langlands programme (I will let you discover on your own what it is about ).

Vietnam is therefore the second Asian country to have won this medal, after Japan. Less than 50 people have been awarded this medal since its creation in 1936. This is a national pride for the Vietnamese people who are also trying to assert themselves on today’s international stage and not just through the painful war victories they obtained in the past.

We cannot forget France, hence the title of this post, where Bao Chau carried out most of his research work at the Paris-Sud University under the supervision of Gérard Laumon who had another student who won the Fields medal in 2002 (Laurent Lafforgue)!

Vietnam gave Bao Chau the necessary knowledge for his start, while France offered him wings to fly as high as possible. The precious grey matter does not belong to a single people, but to the entire humanity. Pentalog’s restricted case also proves that projects of worldwide clients can easily be carried out by French, Romanian, Moldovan or Vietnamese teams. It is from this diversity and internationalization that stems Pentalog’s strength, because we can draw the greatest assets from everyone.

My only regret is that the entire French press only mentioned Bao Chau as being French! He is first of all Vietnamese and was only naturalized in 2010.

PS: I take a small personal pride in having had the chance to attend the same primary and secondary school as Bao Chau

Thanks to several important new contracts and the development of previous activities of Q2 and Q1, Pentalog will reach an organic growth superior or equal to 38% in Q3. All of Pentalog’s quarterly results have been systematically displaying a sales figure increase since 2002. This is, therefore, the 35th consecutive quarterly increase registered by Pentalog, which has thus become the leading IT nearshoring force of the European Union. The predicted annual sales figure is thus revised upwards, between 16 and 17 million euros. Profitability is also on the rise.

Several new production activities for new clients have been launched. Among them we find Sierra Wireless, Ubisoft Romania, a grow-up and a start-up, both from France, and, finally, a German industrial leader.

Pentalog Labbs has now become operational. This R&D unit has started delivering proofs of concept to its clients and is also used as an incubator for Pentalog’s investment projects. New concepts on innovative business approaches have already been put forth on the market. Several commercial developments could be announced during the months and years to come. Pentalog Labbs is the first Franco-Romanian private incubation structure. Based in both countries, the Labbs is under Frédéric Lasnier’s direct responsibility, the Group’s CEO, helped by two assistant directors, and is in search of fertile mergers between emerging countries and Western economies. If the experience works, it could be extended to Vietnam.

In total, the group has created 120 jobs since the beginning of the year and could create another 30 to 80 jobs by the end of 2010.

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Almost two years ago, Eric, Virginie and I met in Brasov for 36 hours of reflexion on Pentalog’s potential progress before 2010 and from now until 2013. Two plans were developed. The 14-2010 plan is in its final months. It has proven our ability to conceive a near future, to understand our strengths, our qualities and to implement series of rational actions in order to achieve an objective. We will exceed it by 15-20% in terms of sales figure. Leaving figures aside, we are satisfied with our good shape because JVs are reinforced, Pentalog Deutschland is a reality and is performing very well and with the fact that our strategy in Germany is recognized by the most important companies. 60 Romanian engineers are already providing services to our German clients on a daily basis. Very prestigious projects are being prepared. We had also decided there to open our Vietnamese office which now has 55 collaborators, provides services for 5 French clients and takes over a part of Pentalog’s internal developments.

The 30-2013 plan was a different and very innovative exercise for us. We listed growth concepts that could be taken into account in order to reach this figure, among others the launch of new JVs. We also enumerated our long-term weaknesses and started to work on them. Training witnessed a great boom, especially for management staff, in countries that are often criticized for their poor management abilities.

We have reassessed our former long-term plan, which therefore becomes our short-term plan. This means that we must consolidate it, materialize the actions to be carried out and recalculate it. I would like to let you know that by 2013 we will have opened at least one more office in Romania, one undoubtedly in Maghreb, a second one in Vietnam and will have made commercial propositions in new target countries. Among others, we must absolutely include the high German demand into our growth plans. Thus, we could soon have to open offices in Poland, Estonia or elsewhere. The current French and German offshore market is still in its early stages. I have been stating for a long time that the offshore volume in outsourcing will easily exceed 15% and could even reach 30%. Demography and abandonment of the scientific field will play a much more significant role than cost reduction in this process. We confirm our intention to continue to grow by 30% a year while making as few acquisitions as possible.

What about 2016? A change in methods, financing, products and services, in identification, briefly – in strategy. Acquisitions could play a greater role. Like offshore, the word “cloud” will have almost disappeared… because we will find ourselves surrounded by it. The Pentalog Group will still have to have a future. Will it reach a sales figure of 50, 75, 100 million or 1 billion euros? Virginie, Eric and I are going to present our thoughts to the Board of Directors. It is up to the members to offer their feedback.

What I can say is that growth and profitability will continue to be our main preoccupations. In the context of a European resource shortage, we will therefore have to rely more than ever on our productivity and more and more on innovation.

Among the array of projects deployed in the lab, there is a project which is apparently less avant-garde because it focuses on social networks. Out of thousands of existing projects, wasn’t there a single one that could draw Pentalog’s attention?! In fact, Pentalog wishes to start from the basic structure of an open source platform and initiate a process of reflexion that can lead to different versions of the social network concept. We are going to push this concept towards such fields as skills management, recruitment, market places, helpdesk, crowd sourcing, front-back office relationship etc. I don’t know how to express this yet, but let’s just say that we are dreaming of a social network platform that could become a sort of OS of clouds. It could allow for intelligent and context-based communication between systems and users and it could also enable users to have general functions aimed at finding help quickly, all of this in a natural language and within a very simple interface. Moreover, I have a long-standing belief that social networks are the true market places of online services and that it is the latter that should become the providers of the former. But for that they need semi-plug&play solutions, a field in which Facebook, which is leading the world market, is truly king. Nevertheless, in the era of the cloud, not all service providers will resort to Facebook in order to build their user community; some will want to build exclusive communities while others will want their own community… which will be partially open to Facebook and Google, though.

We have therefore opened an R&D operation dedicated to social networks in the lab. Like for M2M, we already have two early adopter projects which, although they won’t revolutionize the field, will help place Pentalog among the players on this market. The Hanoi site has been chosen to carry out the RS platforms, as well as the web services that will enable providers to present their offers in the best places possible, in corners, groups… you may call them as you like.

This project will prove the intellectual force of an R&D solution based in two emerging countries, like Romania and Vietnam. The origin of these projects (Vrotnamia ) will make the difference in comparison with West European and Californian competitors and will also help reduce costs, which will undoubtedly increase agility during the design phases. I am particularly optimistic about the feasibility of this choice when each day I notice the amazing dynamism of Social Networking in these countries.

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As for Eastern Europe, what do we intend to do for a market that demands the group’s experience in solution design and deployment? Pentalog entrusted the Pentalog Labb, the group’s technological prospective structure, based in Romania, with the launch of a project designed to completely review M2M network management and with the development of a general but customizable application, that meets the needs of all economic sectors, from car rental to healthcare equipment or from energy distribution to industrial park management or home automation. One of the Labb’s project managers is in charge of producing a first proof of concept which will be accompanied by an architecture recommendation allowing to integrate the data generated by hundreds of thousands or even millions of connected devices.

After producing this proof of concept, it is Pentalog’s Chisinau office that will be entrusted with building this ambitious platform that will be a part of Pentalog’s future cloud or that of our clients. Being already sold, even before existing other than in our intentions and dreams, the platform is already drawing questions from several clients. At any rate, it places Pentalog Romania, Moldova and Vietnam at the heart of one of the greatest stakes of information society in the 10 years to come. Pentalog is determined to prove, through its future successes, that Eastern Europe is not just an outsourcing solution, but that it is perfectly capable of rising up to the challenge of technological innovation.

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We continue our Pentastock 2010 presentation with Frederic’s official speech held in Romanian, because, as he uses to say, he feels Romanian inside.

Don’t forget that the pictures taken at this event are available on our Picasa account.

“The Pentalog Group, a software development outsourcing group which operates software development centers in Eastern Europe and Vietnam opens a subsidiary in Israel. Eli Friedmann, Managing Director of Pentalog Israel: “The IT services offered by Pentalog will save Israeli companies significant costs without compromising work quality.”

The Pentalog Group, providing software development outsourcing services in Offshore and Nearshore models in Eastern Europe and Vietnam, is starting a subsidiary, Pentalog Israel, which is located in Kiryat Arie, Petach Tiqua. Pentalog Israel will be managed by Eli Friedmann and will offer its Offshore or Nearshore outsourcing services to Israeli High Tech companies that develop software and/or hardware.

Pentalog ranks among the five leading European offshore and nearshore software development outsourcing companies. It employs over 500 people in 7 countries, of whom over 450 are English speaking, software development engineers, in Eastern Europe and Vietnam.

Pentalog customers in the last decade include dozens of organizations, such as companies, financial institutes, government offices and agencies, municipalities and academic institutes. Pentalog’s customers list includes Hitachi, Ericsson, Orange, France Telecom, Vodafone, Société Générale, Lexmark and more.

The Pentalog Group was founded in 1993 by Frédéric Lasnier who acts as the group’s major shareholder and CEO. Pentalog operates in France, Germany, Romania (4 software development centers), Moldova, Vietnam and Israel.

Pentalog Israel is managed by Eli Friedmann who brings 13 years of experience in establishment and management of companies and projects in software development outsourcing, ASIC’s and embedded systems. Lina Jackont, the newly appointed COO of Pentalog Israel has some 11 years of project management experience including 3 years in offshore projects.

Pentalog Israel offers development services along the entire life cycle of a product, starting from specifications to development, testing and maintenance. It offers software and chip development services to developers of electronic equipment and embedded systems (including real time embedded) and IC developers (Fabless) including Backend, frontend, analog circuit, mixed signal and IC mask layout.

Eli Friedmann says: “Contrary to common perception of development outsourcing as an inexpensive and inferior solution, Pentalog believes that it will need to provide a significantly superior solution in addition to its being cost effective. The services offered by Pentalog will save Israeli companies significant costs and will decrease time to market without any compromise on product quality and stability. Pentalog’s service quality derives from its high quality manpower which is achieved by both careful people selection and an extensive investment in bettering its manpower by ongoing professional education, personal tutoring, excellent work conditions and extensive incentives plan while focusing on a dynamic work style, strict following of schedules and intensive ongoing contact with its customers.

Pentalog Israel’s website: www.pentalog.co.il

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But above all, this crowns an incredible year 2009-2010 for Pentalog in terms of recognition. For, if we are “only” on the 90th place in France, we have also distinguished ourselves in two other important competitions. Being ranked among the first 500 European technology companies (Deloitte Fast 500), in the French TOP100 and receiving the silver medal at the French contest for company strategy is like winning the combined ski race or the decathlon in athletics. The first takes into account growth over 5 years, in a sector that is growing quite naturally, at European level, the second focuses on profitability (90th place in France) while the last evaluates strategy and establishes a link between the past, the present and the future.

For both shareholders and employees, these are important elements of recognition and we are all happy about the positive consequences that they will have in the media and the professional circles. Therefore, it is a lot easier for us to prove that we have reached our 5-year objectives by becoming the European nearshore leader, in addition to having become the French leader.

The year 2010 strengthens Pentalog’s progress, with higher profitability that is undoubtedly still to come. Growth will be lower than in 2009, but should still come close to, if not exceed 30%. We could, therefore, compete again with good chances of success

I wish that this commitment, which is absolutely apolitical, could help to develop the understanding between peoples… which, unfortunately, is still in need of such help.

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The LABS team must be compact, experienced and responsive, consisting in dynamic experts, endowed with a high level of creativity and ingenuity.

3 Senior Project Managers: be they technical or functional, their role will be to propose all the ideas, organize and prioritize them, highlight them in the POC, propose a robust architecture and, finally, estimate the potential production cost.
2 high caliber Architects: they will have the difficult task of proposing the best architecture, but also a first estimation of production. One of them will be more focused on the database architecture and system sizing; the other will rather deal with Front End architectures and application connector technology.
3 Senior Developers who are Interface Experts: these people will have to deliver the POC in record time, paying particular attention to the end user ergonomics.
2 Business Analysts: they will have to stimulate the production of ideas, organize and formalize them so that they may be comprehensible and “marketable”

The whole team will have the possibility of interacting with other players of the Group, the Technical Department in particular, as the latter will be able to make numerous contributions based on its past experience and the Incubator’s research capacities, but also because the first two subjects are of general interest: productivity management and competence marketing.

There are still vacant positions left and, therefore, if any of you is motivated by one of these posts, you should contact Frédéric Lasnier as soon as possible!

Besides these calls to order that I receive from within the company, I also meet fellow entrepreneurs, or even politicians and high officials, who don’t hesitate to tell me to do as I please, but not to say it out loud… in the name of this famous political correctness.

I have two reasons for refusing them. First of all, let us begin with a pragmatic-one . All I have to do is take a look at statistics to realize that many of you prefer articles that are somewhat controversial. A little straightforward article once in a while immediately increases the audience. This tone, the subjects that are discussed, actually represent Pentalog’s trademark. Why should I publish elsewhere when, as I have said, these topics seem to be all linked to or are inspired by my professional environment? As I am dedicating my life to this company, it is natural that this blog should also receive my doubts, my ideas, my anger etc.

At a time when the work of certain collaborators of our distinguished politicians consists in inventing minor scandals linked to the economic organization of the society or the companies, when theatrical displays are more important than real politics, I think that saying what is on your mind is more honest than saying what the system would have you say… whatever your opinions may be. The true dishonesty, the true danger, reside in the political correctness and demagogy that have taken hold of our “modern” nations. The sophistication of communication generates a situation in which reality disrupts discourse. That is appalling!

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I am particularly pleased with the fact that the editorial staff of 01 has chosen to publish an excerpt from my article next to an article by Jacques Attali… a genuine globalization expert whose clear-sightedness I have been praising for a long time. His article referred to the invasion of social networks in everyday life, which is another subject that I might talk about one day

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