Since I’ve returned from the US, I’ve been trying to find the time and inspiration to express the feelings I had there. I must say I owe my inspiration to the loss of triple A and the political antics which preceded it. As for the time, as usual, a short flight made it available.

My comments won’t be very long. I remember the New York potholed streets, just like after an earthquake. I remember the economic, social and cultural fragmentation which makes Californians say that it is easier to understand and communicate with a Calcutta call center employee than with a native American from the Gulf of Mexico. Travelers will probably wonder if the people who live along the coasts, East and West, belong to the same nation as the ones in the central area of the country. This country where, presently, even the rich middle class is ashamed when it comes to government schools or to the health care system. This magnificent country of Yale, Berkeley, and Harvard, which inflames our imagination, is also the first to have its life expectancy decline.

The other facet of this everyday America is that of the world’s largest arsenal of war, counting such a large number of aircraft-carriers (11?) in operation that the American president doesn’t probably know where he has parked them all. It is also that of the development programs for nearly infinite budget combat aircraft (see F35), of hundreds of thousands of soldiers deployed on various terrains, in wars with a whiff of XIXth century colonialism… Everything the USA save on the back of the American people is then spent on shiny death toys intended to keep up diplomatic appearances in front of all the world’s nations.

I can’t stop thinking that this state, which doesn’t react to the factual, intellectual and moral impoverishment of its population, which limits the resources allocated to the most elementary economic development tools (education, infrastructures), which makes up threats in order to justify military actions to its people, displays the budget and philosophical finery of a hard right state-controlled economy. Is there a contemporary history sub-discipline which makes the radiography of political regimes only by analyzing budgetary ratios?

The US financial resources are allocated to questionable needs from a historical perspective (the recent withdrawal of troops from Iraq, in a context of return of violence, demonstrates this fact), while tangible needs in the field of education and health protection have not been covered. Nothing seems to be too good for the industrial, military and energy sectors, completely outdated in the world race, but which keep on getting richer while impoverishing the nation. The future American president, unless paranoia sets in completely, will not have the financial means for this hard right South American dirigisme substitute. What will he make of this opportunity for historic change of course?

For those of you who don’t know me, I must point out that I love America and I have often written articles on the American genius. The same budget analysis, concerning France, with its 56% of public expenditure in GDP, would lead to the conclusion that France is also an ersatz of totalitarian socialist regime. Is this a compulsory passage for old democracies?

Pentalog began its Vietnamese adventure in 2009. For 2 and a half years, the office was managed by Tuan Nguyen Quoc. A great team of 60 people is in charge of several customer projects (Altadis Imperial Tobacco, Sierra Wireless, Active System, Lexware, People Centric, Anevia etc.) or internal projects. Moreover, a team of 8-10 people will start a project for another important client in September.
This growing trend is only just starting. Our Asian strategy requires that we take steps forward, as part of a company development process which will have a special focus on the Asian market.
All multinational companies made this choice a long while ago, as the economic dynamism of the region cannot be ignored.

In the scope of this new organization, Marc Charbit has taken over the management of the Hanoi office. He joined the company at the beginning of June and spent his first weeks at Pentalog in the Romanian and Moldovan offices and at the Orléans headquarters. He is a young French manager with international experience in one of the top 5 French IT companies. He moved to Vietnam 5 years ago and has developed a strong relationship with this country, considering that he even learned the language. Like all valuable Pentalog employees, he is multilingual. He speaks Vietnamese, English, German, Slovak and, of course, French. He will play a major role in implementing the quality policy and preparing the Hanoi office for the ISO certification.

Welcome Marc! A great challenge lies ahead of you!

Wonderful weather here in California After 3 days of meetings in the Bay area, we can now confirm there are definitely interesting opportunities to be seized for our business here. We are already about to make 2 offers to companies we met and we had promising discussions about setting up a local Pentalog entity.

We were very impressed by the people we had the pleasure to meet so far: be they French or American, either managing start-ups, working for big or mid-sized companies, or former CEOs, they all have impressive professional background, are humble, particularly open-minded and have strong entrepreneurial will associated with high-level financial culture. At the heart of IT innovation, VCs are major actors that cannot be ignored and every single start-up goes into a fund raising process at very early stages. It is almost an industrualized process here in the Silicon Valley.

The People Centric solution and business model we presented encountered a lot of enthousiasm, in an area where HR scarcity makes recuitment and retention a very hard job. The problem is even worse in the US and espacially in the Silicon Valley than in Western Europe. Attracting and keeping the best talent is very costly and despite high salaries and retention bonuses, workers go from one company to another, looking for different experiences to finally end-up creating their own companies. This is someting normal here. So, this environment is very stimulating for the ones who have ideas and ambition, it is also extremely competitive.

Apart from that, let us not forget to underline that the local climate, wines and friendly and relaxed atmosphere makes this place even more attractive for a future entity of our IT outsourcing company

About offshoring, for now we have not been told any surprising things about local habits, the presence of Indian giants and the maket evolution. We will get back to this later, we still have to meet some other experts in that area to get a better insight.

In line with our policy of communicating on our most essential actions, we would like to inform Pentalog employees and all company stakeholders that we have made a purchase bid for an 800m2 office property which would enable to host Pentalog’s world headquarters in Orléans.

As we explained one month ago, Pentalog’s high-level activities in Orléans require an office space which will enable us to attract the best national and international experts in the service and technology fields. Therefore, this is a very ambitious project for Pentalog which, as we have already mentioned, will consist in choosing our future headquarters. Will it be in Orléans or in Paris? Some French Pentalog employees are in favour of other French metropolises. As Paris is the hub of the French economy and air transport, the Loire and Île-de-France departments seem like more realistic options.

We will provide you with regular updates on the progress of this project.

In 2006, Pentalog employees had an average age of approximately 25 years. This average has now risen to 28 years. As we faced a high turnover, we had to come up with an employee retention policy which included a remuneration system based on the recognition of our employees’ efforts. The problem is that the very notion of effort is not the same for everyone and, moreover, recognition of what is considered an effort or not varies with age. Considering that I myself am not an early riser, as everyone knows , I could well understand that it might be difficult for 25-year-olds to be punctual in the morning. Nevertheless, briefings and scrum meetings require the presence of the entire team. Thus, taking into account the young age of the staff in our IT outsourcing company, we decided to turn morning punctuality into a bonus criterion. I can tell you that the earliest risers among Pentalog managers could not be easily convinced

Objectivizing recognition

Likewise, we have always preferred recruiting rational and creative individuals who are able to come up with propositions for their clients, in addition to respecting the production processes, draw up the reports which enable us to invoice, to document their work and many others, which are seen as constraints by talented developers. If nobody at Pentalog questions the efficiency of the ISO 9001 quality system, that is because it is closely linked to a remuneration system which includes regularity and process follow-up.

The end quality of the delivered product and the respect for deadlines are also included in the financial rewarding system.

Whatever the case may be, the bonus system seemed like the most obvious objectivization method of employee recognition. In total, there are no less than 40 criteria which are taken into account on a daily basis by our PMs in order to determine the individual monthly bonus of each member of their teams. We are fond of this type of management innovations which render us different from other companies. Indeed, even though management costs related to such a system are significant, especially with a workforce of 650 employees, it offers us a considerable advantage when it comes to attracting and retaining human resources and renders Pentalog one of the best offshore nearshore companies in the world, with record satisfaction and recommendation rates, both in the East and in the West. Our latest internal satisfaction survey supports this claim. We are on the same tendency of permanently looking for harmonious systems designed to continually improve our performance. The waiting lists that we have in almost all of the cities stand as a proof.

From recognition to the sense of belonging

The other essential element that we promote, in agreement with the sociological studies on the Y generation, is the sense of belonging. Whether by searching for common values, joining innovation programmes or taking part in important holidays, we consider it of the utmost importance to support the project team, which is the elementary group of any IT company. Pentalog has a secret weapon for this – Team Beering! We have a small budget, which is limited because we don’t want to encourage alcohol consumption , which is designed to enable our project teams to go out for a drink together every once in a while, according to their own planning.

Finally, at a higher level, i.e. the office, the delivery center, the unit which is shared by over one hundred people, we allocate a small budget for different activities, like renting football fields, karting, the Christmas party or the collective holiday week which is so dear to our Vietnamese team. I actually heard that the latter were about to set off for a trip to Thailand. I would like to take the opportunity offered by this psychological and sociological article to wish them a good trip and a pleasant stay! Which just goes to show that expectations are not the same among the countries in which we have offices

The last point refers to online social networks. Both Pentalog and PeopleCentric display their values, their good or bad mood in complete transparency. Pentalog employees are quite active online. The Arab spring has shown everyone of us the political or rather cognitive importance of social networks. But Pentalog employees had already experienced this in Moldova, which witnessed the first Twitter revolution. Therefore, our online presence is quite natural, as these networks embody a world in which individuals experiment at great speeds their new preferences and new means of expression in harmony with the other members of their generation… Y, of course.

As planned with Cornel and Iulia, we extended our trip to the city-state of Singapore by a few hours, before returning to Europe in an A380, following our mission to Hanoi.

The city center is quite impressive, as it comes very close to perfection, perhaps too much so. The streets and subway are incredibly clean. Within an area of several square kilometres you can find banks, telecommunication companies, cultural sites and malls. They can be seen everywhere and are often thematic (restaurants, luxury or IT shops etc.). After having visited the IT mall in Bangkok, we found the one in Singapore to be as exciting. The Surcouf IT mall in Paris could use a bit of revamping. We passed by the legendary places of this city:

- Marina Bay with its enormous hotel
- A nighttime tour in the Flyer (Giant wheel)
- the Merlion, the half-lion, half-fish symbol of the city
- the Raffles Hotel, with its 19th century colonial architecture
- the Chinatown which blends well together with the rest of the city
- Boad Quay, a series of tourist restaurants by the water

This 700 km2 city of approximately 5 million inhabitants is very cosmopolitan, with an estimated foreign population of 40%, of which 70% is made up of Chinese immigrants. It has a high living standard (its GDP ranks 18th worldwide – it is almost equivalent to that of France). When visiting the zoo outside the city, we didn’t witness fundamental changes. The towers disappeared, only to make room for decent blocks of flats (we didn’t see all of them). It was a hot day without air conditioning.

As part of Pentalog’s cloud plans, we could return to Singapore (or Hong Kong) in order to set up local Cloud Computing services. The major telecom operators in the region are SingTel (important sponsor of the nighttime F1 grand prix), PCCW (Hong Kong) and NTT (Japan) and we will undoubtedly use their boards for installing our infrastructure in order to benefit from the best latency times. As regards the IT hardware in Singapore, while the iPad price is quite appealing there, they didn’t have it on stock in the stores I visited. There is a global shortage.

The airport follows the same line: commercial mall, huge proportions, extremely clean etc. It handled over 42 million passengers in 2010 (as compared to 58 million for Charles de Gaulle).

Cornel and Iulia were charmed by the perfectionism of this city. I have a more moderate opinion, as even though I admit the city comes close to perfection, I think that, over time, our Latin temperaments could grow tired of this neatness.

Pentalog started becoming a 2.0 company as early as the year 2000 and perhaps even before that. Open capital, figures made public, transparent strategy, openness for all employees, all of this was implemented more than 10 years ago. The web has played a vital role in this strategy and, without this technological revolution, I don’t think it would have been possible to build such a company. Everything from sales to recruitment goes through the web channel which is continually expanding and supports more and more sophisticated productions.

In this respect, our fourth web policy, materialized through the launch of www.pentalog.com V4 in September 2010, was to offer more animations, as well as video images. Our videos have been viewed more than 66,000 times and we have had our own Youtube channel for several months. We have already produced over one hundred videos.

Nevertheless, neither the quantity, nor the quality are sufficient. We are therefore launching an internal webTV equipped with a set and professional technical resources. It will produce two types of content: on the one hand, corporate videos for meeting the company’s immediate objectives (related to sales and HR) and, on the other hand, talk shows on complex subjects discussed with professional guests. The shows will be produced by Pentalog TV and perhaps by other specialized web channels, as well.

The Iasi center has been chosen to host the set, for several reasons. First of all, it is a dynamic site which regularly receives Pentalog clients. Secondly, it hasn’t hosted any of the company’s cross-department functions before. We have now accomplished this. Finally, the center can be reached by plane from Bucharest and Vienna and is greatly used by our German customers.

The pilot productions have been filmed this week. They feature developers, Project Managers, an Office Director and technical experts of the company. A complete list of shows has been drawn up. We now need to create an editorial department, credits etc.

As for the meeting of our corporate objectives, the use of the video channel had become vital. Try, for instance, to search for “SSII offshore” (offshore IT service company) on Google and you will find a Pentalog video that offers a visit to the Brasov office at the beginning of the second page (www.pentalog.fr is on the first page). Videos are part and parcel of our SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. In fact, videos “give life” to content and highlight project carriers and all participants. After having produced thousands of content items for the semantic web, and even though we will continue to do so, we need to increase the number of our video productions and consider Youtube as a document platform and a search engine in itself. But what I find particularly appealing is the ability to prove the existence and performance of the services and teams of our IT outsourcing company, whereas all our competitors continue to rely on 1.0 technologies and often speak of things that they don’t do or of human and technical resources that they oversize to considerable extents. It is a lot more difficult to cheat using animated images. Images will therefore become vital in creating any type of communication products, including online business cards, success stories or direct recruitment by project teams.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my friend Lucie Brasseur who is helping us with this project. She offered us both her services and her production equipment. The vivacious host, who is a producer and owner of Twideco TV in Orléans, will allow us to save considerable time. I am extremely grateful to her. We have posted online a first non-edited production of a strategic discussion between Catalin (Iasi Office Director) and I, in Romanian. Even if you don’t speak Romanian, wait until the middle of the video and you will be amused . The collection of bloopers already looks promising

I don’t know if you remember this song from Murray Head, dating back to the last century (1984), in which he compared Bangkok and its nightlife to a game of chess. Last weekend, I travelled to Bangkok to spend a night there, thus accompanying Thierry in his habitual journey to Bangkok.

As this was my first time in Bangkok, I could feel the contrast of this megalopolis of more than 9 million (official) inhabitants, between its modern towers and its neighbourhoods from days gone by where the king and his family are actively present.

The journey unfolded as follows:
- On our arrival, we had a plentiful meal in a Japanese restaurant with a generous buffet
- We visited the city centre and MBK (large mall)
- We went to a seafood restaurant (which was truly delightful)
- We strolled down the “night market”. This is a pop-up market on the pavement where you can find everything and which takes a considerable part of your night time. It is a most colourful place.

Early on Sunday morning, we went to the “Chatuchak weekend market” which hosts an impressive 8,000 shops of all types (clothing, decoration, food, various trinkets etc.), crammed together on 14 hectares, in old buildings grouped into thematic areas. The animal area is quite impressive. As Thierry said on arriving, “Here, even when you don’t need anything, you still find something to buy”.

As it was the beginning of the monsoon, we had quite a few showers. It is amazing how foreigners stop moving when it rains, while locals continue about their business in their panchos.

We finished our journey with a visit to Pantip Plaza, the most important IT commercial centre where, on a surface of several tens of thousands of square metres, one can find all types of IT equipment (computers, accessories etc.). Unfortunately, I didn’t spend enough time there to notice what the tendencies were. But, of course, there are numerous Apple stores and tablets of all kinds.

We ended our “Mall” weekend at the Bangkok airport which is quite splendid. It is trying to assert itself as an alternative to Singapore. Its duty-free must therefore have branded products. With the arrival of the A380 airplanes in 2012, the airport will be able to attract more tourists travelling to the region. In 2010, this airport entered the top 10 “World Airport Awards rankings”.

The weekend was, therefore, rather shopping-oriented. But this gives me the possibility of returning to the city (which is only 1.5 hours away from Hanoi) for a more touristic visit. I’d like to thank Thierry for this quick and interesting trip to a city that he is very familiar with.

Next weekend, I will go on a two-day trip to Singapore before returning to France. Will it be another shopping weekend?

At a time when Pentalog is planning on relocating to a new headquarters and actually buying it, a lot of questions come to mind on the role that Orléans plays within the group.
I should mention right from the start that the reason we need a new location is that we are expanding and that our offices in the technology park, which were too large 10 years ago, no longer allow us to increase our staff.

The extremely high growth that we are registering (10th consecutive year) and our software production model determine us to recruit more and more IT project directors, financial specialists, marketing teams, legal advisers in business law, consultants… In short, if at first we needed to transform our existing teams, we need to develop them once again.

There are 26 proficient managers working in Orléans, and all of them speak at least two languages. They implement and manage complex services which are developed and sold throughout Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Romania, Moldova), but also in the Middle East (Israel) and Asia. Orléans employees collectively own 90% of the group capital and almost 50% of them are shareholders. This is an agile and innovative group of people who have a perfect understanding of the challenges of globalization. Pentalog Orléans is somehow at the top of the group’s added value chain. Considering our current rate of success (our growth varied between 32 and 65% during the years of economic crisis), our Orléans staff should probably double over the next 3 to 5 years. As a reminder, the group currently employs 650 people throughout the world and its total workforce should exceed 1,000 employees in 2013.

Let us not forget the role played by Pentalabbs, the group’s private incubator and innovation laboratory, which already assists two companies in Orléans. They will already achieve a substantial growth and sales figure this year. The companies in question are Easyflyer and PeopleCentric France. Overall, the incubator has contributed to the development of three companies in France and four in Europe. It is currently trying to draw at least one more start-up to Orléans.
This small group working at Pentalog Orléans consists of approximately 30 people who manage together a global activity amounting to 20-25 million euros in 2011.

Our future headquarters, if it remains in Orléans (the amount of time we spend in Paris and the striking lack of airports in our vicinity sometimes makes us consider moving to the Île-de-France region), should allow us to:

- Assume the transition from our SME status towards that of an intermediate-sized IT company which exports high-level industrialized services
- Promote the brand image and the company know-how throughout the world
- Draw to Orléans the best employees, regardless of where they may come from, and offering them a rewarding working environment. In fact, the people we will be recruiting in France are going to be of an increasingly high level.
- Promote the image of Pentalabbs as well, and the future growth of the incubator.

Let us all hope that we will succeed in defining this local project that we are fond of and we will avoid the disappointment we felt a few years ago, which would risk undermining our desire to stay in this region that we love.

While the IT recruitment market has been again witnessing strong tensions over the last few months, People Centric, a Pentalog spin-off supported by Pentalabbs and created by former Pentalog employees, is beginning to generate staggering figures. The total size of its database went from 40,000 to 130,000 CVs in the last half-year. 80,000 profiles are French, 50,000 are Romanian, and the company is planning on doubling this figure in 2011, given its current success rate. But this is not all… 25% of the hosted profiles have taken at least one technical test. Therefore, this is an unprecedented valuation of technical professionals which has already targeted over 30,000 people! This represents an unparalleled contribution in the world of online applications and professional social networks. These figures reflect the web strategy of the company which has not been monetized, yet. This will be the next step of its BP. But there are already several tens of thousands of developers who contribute to the traffic of the platform.

In the first quarter, Raluca Oţelea and Laurent Clementz’s teams recruited… 75 people in three countries. The acceleration has been sudden. The company has an estimated annual recruitment capacity of 700 people, taking into account its current resources; it needs to find a few more clients . This recruitment line of service, which is the most prominent in the offer of People Centric, the undisputed leader in its country of origin (Romania), has set itself the clear objective of matching this performance in France, as well.

But are you aware that People Centric offers SaaS technologies dedicated to recruitment and competence marketing? There are already four clients who host tens of thousands of CVs as white label on its tools, both back office and front end, for recruitment purposes (joblog, application management, competence marketing, mobile application, testing platform etc.). Two of them perform more than just recruitment activities and make use of the competence marketing functions. A client has purchased the social network platform and another one is currently reflecting on this new module. The platform provides great commercial potential for the companies using it. By the end of 2011, I think we will be able to say that People Centric will have recruited approximately 500 people, sold between 5 and 10 partial or complete techno packs and achieved a sales figure of between 600,000 and 1,000,000 euros. It already has almost 30 employees. Through its unique capacity to process large volumes of candidates, on a market that is currently undergoing a severe crisis in terms of offer, through its ability to bring out and assess the level of competence and through the unprecedented number of IT professionals who use its services, this little French-Romanian start-up could become a catalyst for successful projects.

No, don’t hang up, I’m telling you! No, the on-hold music server is not messing around! The story is simple: a few weeks ago, a French TV channel started rerunning a TV series which is an absolute must, “Baa Baa Black Sheep”. The title says exactly what it means. The show features a gang of misfit fighter pilots during the Pacific war. These pugnacious, flirty, hard-drinking and brilliant fellows are all, or almost all, court-martialed and eventually accept Major Greg Pappy Boyington’s leadership, an officer who is 10 years their elder and who shares with them a great deal of the qualities of my text

The latter draws on his many personal faults, especially his big mouth and his self-interested respect for military authorities and practices, to introduce on the Vella la Cava island a commanding style inspired by the dangers encountered by his young pilots, based on an intense camaraderie that is worthy of the three musketeers. The result is, in my opinion, the absolute example of leadership… could this be an inspiration?!? I strongly recommend watching this show again! The music is provided by Pentalog!

Pentalog, a nearshore outsourcing company,  is making quick progress with its strategy of implementing an e-commerce cloud which combines open source solutions (Drupal, Magento, Liferay etc.) and offshore and nearshore human resources. I should add that we are getting ready to start several projects for e-commerce and online entertainment leaders in the following weeks. The strategy of consolidating our competences on Ruby on Rail, Magento, PHP, Drupal, both in Romania and in Vietnam and Moldova is widely appreciated by customers who no longer find the solutions they are looking for on the consulting and human resources markets in Western Europe. This service-oriented cloud will be based on five expertise layers:

- e-commerce design and user-friendliness: Proof of concept, design, navigation
- development and maintenance: Magento, Drupal, Prestashop, PHP, Java etc.
- SEO-SEM: multilingual referencing, which extends well beyond the French language, is an absolute necessity within a more general e-commerce approach
- Localization: we can already ensure the implementation of French, English, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish or Italian versions.
- setting up specialized e-commerce platforms on customers’ premises or hosting them in our own redundant data centers, in Paris or Bucharest.

Relying on its high-level development capacities and its first-rate redundant hosting capabilities, Pentalog is now able to take on all types of e-commerce projects, whether small scale or large scale. By the end of 2011, the Pentalog teams will have helped e-commerce clients achieve a sales figure of one billion euros in France and Europe, and will boast a customer portfolio that includes several market leaders.

As we have already been considering the idea for a while now, perhaps this is the right moment for Pentalog to take the first steps forward… The western part of the USA is of interest to us in more than one respects: given the success of Pentalabbs, our business incubator, how could we not consider doing business in the world’s leading innovation centre? The Silicon Valley is home to Hewlett Packard, Apple, Intel, Sun Microsystems (recently bought out by Oracle), eBay etc. Numerous IT giants have established their headquarters or technology parks in this area which hosts 6,000 high-tech companies and some of the most prestigious universities in the world. This is a great breeding ground for entrepreneurs, high-level engineers and financiers; in short, a complete ecosystem which facilitates the emergence of products, services and innovative business models.
Pentalabbs wishes to identify opportunities for collaboration with other innovative companies in such fields as e-commerce, recruitment and software engineering.

People-Centric, Pentalog’s spin-off incubated by Pentalabbs, provides its clients with a range of tools dedicated to recruitment, available in SaaS mode, and whose components can be made available as white-label products. This start-up, which is both a web recruitment agency specialized in the IT sector and an editor of HR solutions, enjoys a resounding success, especially with French IT companies, and is getting ready to export its business model to other countries, as well. Finding partners for selling its solutions on the US market is one of the opportunities that Frédéric wants to look into during his visit to San Francisco next June.

On the other hand, opening a Pentalog branch office in the USA is also a possibility. This could be an entity specializing in a certain technology, a type of service or a particular sector. We will see what can be done depending on the meetings and local interests and specificities…

This could also be an opportunity to make a trip to Canada, where the French-language, high-tech environment and the presence of Eastern European expats turn the country into another serious candidate for the development of Pentalog’s activities in partnership with local associates. If any of the Romanian, Moldovan and French citizens who have relocated to these Anglo-Saxon regions is interested in our projects, they are asked to contact us as soon as possible.

Japan is in serious need of tech…

- Quake and IT: Shaking in Tokyo, waiting in San Diego (11 March 2011, Computer World)
- Japan’s Internet largely intact after earthquake, tsunami (13 March 2011, Computer World)
- Tech companies assess Japanese tsunami damage (11 March 2011, Computer Weekly)
- Japan quake and tsunami puts Apple iPad in perspective (12 March 2011, ZD Net)
- Outsourcing: Why CIOs Hate How You Sell IT Services (10 March 2011, CIO)
- Tech CFOs to Hire Sales, R&D Staff As Growth Returns (10 March 2011, CIO)
- Schockwellen für die Wirtschaft (11 March 2011, Manager Magazin)
- Realität statt Powerpoint (13 March 2011, Computer Woche)
- IT – Fass ohne Boden (11 March 2011, Computer Woche)
- Das rechtliche Länderrisiko der Cloud (10 March 2011, IT Business)
- So verändert Cloud Computing IT-Jobs (09 March 2011, CIO)
- Westeuropa wird Android-Territorium (08 March 2011, Inside IT)

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The way IT is:

- Web 4.0 a walk in the clouds (3 March 2011, ZD Net)
- Outsourcing to Focus on Cloud Computing (1 March 2011, CIO)
- How SaaS Will Impact 6 Key Software Categories (1 March 2011, CIO)
- Thermal management in automotive applications (6 March 2011, EE Times)
- Government to shelve 32 ICT projects (4 March 2011, Computer Weekly)
- Double dip: outsourcing opportunities, not obstacles? (4 March 2011, Outsoiurce Magazine)
- Deutschland bleibt beim Wachstum EU-Spitzenreiter (01 March 2011, Focus)
- Green IT und Nachhaltigkeit: Einiges zu tun (04 March 2011, Silicon)
- IT-Profis verzweifelt gesucht (03 March 2011, Computer Woche)
- IT-Budgets fließen verstärkt in Forschung (02 March 2011, Silicon)
- Stadt Zürich wählt Dutzende IT-Dienstleister aus (01 March 2011, Inside IT)

Don’t hesitate to join us on Facebook!

- Cloud CIO: How Cloud Computing Changes IT Staffs (28 January 2011, CIO)
- Which Social Media Sites Are Most Beneficial? (28 January 2011, Innovation Daily)
- Egypt’s Internet Shutdown a Wakeup Call for CIOs (28 January 2011, CIO)
- Egypt Unrest Threatens Status as Rising Outsourcing Star (28 January 2011, CIO)
- Is Unrest a Threat to Offshoring’s Viability? (28 January 2011, CIO)
- City IT developers move to` hedge fund start-ups to double pay (31 January 2011, Computer Weekly)
- Deutsche Industrie erwartet 2011 Wirtschaftswachstum von 2,5 Prozent (25 January 2011, Finanz Nachrichten)
- 11 Outsourcing-Trends für 2011 (28 January 2011, CIO)
- 2011: Renaissance der IT-Themen? www.silicon.de (28 January 2011, Silicon)
- Top 30 der Offshoring-Standorte (26 January 2011, CIO)
- Deutscher Software-Markt wächst rasant www.automotiveit.eu (25 January 2011, Automotive IT)
- Indien und China treiben ITK-Märkte (24 January 2011, Silicon)
- 2011 mehr Budget-Spielraum dank Cloud (24 January 2011, Silicon)

Are the social benefits gained by Europeans, and financed by emerging countries, an overweening imperialistic claim? Who other than populist nationalists can ultimately defend them?

Thanks to the internet, the world is ONE. Cultures are gradually converging. Not that they could disappear in a Hollywood type of fusion, it clearly appears from the web that the peoples’ new expectations are the same everywhere. I noticed this a long time ago among our Romanian, Moldovan and Vietnamese developers. The global village, a popular expression during the early 2000s, is now a reality. How could we not be happy about this?
Of course, from a less positive perspective, the explosion of the western public debt bubble will contribute to the convergence of the economic situations of formerly rich countries with those of developing countries. This debt, withdrawn from the trading surplus of developing countries, which are still financing what the French call “acquis”, their social benefits (are we, in fact, buying annuities on credit?) is, first of all, the result of the confiscation of riches produced by Chinese, Brazilian, Russian employees, and many others. After being recycled by financial markets, this money coming from the East and South finances European pensions, reduction in work hours, instead of paying employees and financing their education and health infrastructures, their houses, their right to consumption, and thus reestablishing Western economic competitiveness.

In this context, the preservation of our social gains is becoming an exaggerated claim of tapping into the riches of others who work more and sometimes better. Yes, social claims in today’s France represent a nationalist attitude proven by facts, as if the French had a right to better conditions by putting in a smaller effort than others on account of history and a (Western, European ?) sense of history. The triple A, this continuous and inexpensive tapping into the riches of others, is a form of post-colonialism, undoubtedly one of the last avatars of a Western imperialism at the end of its road. By simply reading economic facts we realize that the triple A, designed and managed by and for Western institutions, is a political imperialism. How else could France, the USA, the UK, Japan or even Germany obtain the triple A, with their current debt equity ratio?

Don’t tell me it isn’t true; because if this manna were to be stopped tomorrow, either our social bodies would suspend payment after a few days, or the euro, the franc, the German mark would collapse in a few days, bringing the litre of petrol to 10 euros, as well as the loaf of bread, sugar and products manufactured outside Europe… The lender countries, finally wealthy following their work efforts, would then resort to the same raw materials as us, to a considerably greater extent. You may notice that this is already a reality. In fact, it is not essential in the recent events in Tunisia where the people has begun to revolt out of hunger and because inflation on raw materials was becoming unbearable… reasons that are a lot stronger than the establishment of democracy (which I support with all my heart).

Why should then progressive people of all sides not consider a review and audit of their value system, accepting to face the numerous positive effects of globalization? If regulated and, above all, understood, globalization can bridge the most unbearable gaps and put an end to the tyranny of a 2000-year old Western imperialism over the world.
Don’t they risk falling into the nationalist trap and claim, in the name of social gains, the maintenance of a completely iniquitous world financial status? Who else than the beneficiaries of populism can, in the end, give this speech?

There is a solution, based on an old Western and Christian value: work. If French and European citizens want a social system, they will have to pay for it themselves, as part of a collective and lucid ambition, by placing work at the centre of everything and eliminate the principle of “social acquis” (a French tropism) and that of financial speculation (an English tropism). Both of them are immoral consequences of a search for unjustified income and idleness, be they gained by exploiting the work of other nations or on the equity markets.

This article was inspired by Jean Viard, a Sociologist and Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research – the January 16th issue of Journal du Dimanche.

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Because they have already proven their loyalty to the company, because they have assisted us in implementing complex strategies, because they accepted the constraints related to the implementation of these strategies, we have decided, as part of our future capital increase, to invite all our employees who have been with us since 2005 or before to join Pentalog’s general assembly of shareholders.

Pentalog’s sales figure has increased almost fivefold over this period and its valuation probably 10 times. Our plans remain very ambitious, as we intend to exceed the 1000 employee milestone by the end of 2013 and we already foresee a 30% organic growth in 2011. In 2010, our growth exceeded 35%. Our company model remains unique. From the very beginning, it has included employee participation in capital. In 2005, our IT outsourcing company had 75 employees, whereas now it has 600! 25 Pentalog employees are therefore invited today to join the general assembly. Six Pentalog employees are now euro millionaires while three valuable employees from our offshore offices already have a participation of between 100,000 and 300,000 euros in the group.

The group has always taken into account the loyalty of its employees and becoming a shareholder is not an insignificant act. First of all, because we favour those who have accepted the principle of financial effort when, on a regular basis, we distribute free shares. But also because this gives access to an assembly which approves accounts and validates the company strategy. In my opinion, this is the most fundamental aspect. For an employee of a medium-sized group like Pentalog, to become a shareholder is to contribute to the solidarity of the group and share a small part of their destiny with the others.

Whatever the 25 people decide to do with this opportunity, I would like to deeply thank them and publicly say how much I appreciate the confidence that they have placed in us over these five years.

Should an employee who was recruited before 31/12/2005 have been forgotten, he/she is advised to contact Virginie, who is in charge of this operation.