Pentablog: The european offshore, nearshore and right costing blog

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Frédéric Lasnier

President&Chief Executive Officer

At a time when new technologies are becoming the main business carrier, communication is now all about transparency.
Aymeric Libeau

CIO - Vice President Infrastructures and R&D

« Creating the ship is not about weaving the canvas, forging the nails, reading the stars, but rather about giving a taste for the sea » Saint Exupéry
Monica Jiman

Deputy CEO

“The only true exploit of Human beings is to invent themselves.” Francesco Savater
Alexandra Mondanel

International Operations Officer

Relying on partnership in diverse geographical, economical and cultural environments is the best way to sustain a strategy based on strong growth and international expansion.
Hélène Hemery

Marketing Manager

An innovative web policy deployed through the use of web 2.0 marketing methods ensures a greater visibility of products and services.
Sophie Lelarge

WW Sales and BL Director

WW Sales and BL Director
Pierre Peutin

Head of Business Line for Information Systems

Head of Business Line for Information Systems
Mickaël Hiver

Head of Business Lines for Embedded Systems & BPO

We take pride in helping our clients to implement their ideas, which is why we make full use of our consulting role.
Eric Gouin

Administrator

Administrator
Aleth Delcenserie

Quality Manager

Men accept change only when needed and they see need only in crisis", Jean Monnet, founding father of European unity.

The authors:

Contact : +33 2 38 25 30 30 Pentalog TV Pentalog

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Frédéric Lasnier
Title: President&Chief Executive Officer
Bio: After a quick passage in a national marketing service company, Frederic Lasnier founded Pentalog with four colleagues, academics like himself. During a period of economic stagnation (in 1993).
In 1995, he decided to open permanently the capital of Pentalog to the participation of his employees. This participation now has reached 56%. It was a political vision that he shared with the founding members. Starting from 1997, Pentalog exported their first services outside of France. The percentage of foreign activities subsequently reached 60% in 2006.
In 1999, as part of a large software project (10 000 man-days in J2EE), he made his first trip to Romania and laid the foundation for the Pentalog policy of European "low cost". In 2005, he initiated the creation of BPO services (Business Process Outsourcing) and offered a New Business Model to Pentalog High Tech. In 2006, with the help of Ausy, one of the 5 most important players in the French market of outsourced R&D services, he created Pentalog Technology, a joint venture between Ausy and Pentalog, co-owned equally by the two partners. The Joint Venture aims to provide low cost but high quality R & D to global players. Pentalog took operational control of this alliance.
In 2008, Pentalog Deutschland, the German subsidiary of the group was created.
In 2009, Frederic created Pentalog Vietnam.
In all these areas, the management is provided from Orleans and it is here where 70% of the consolidated value is held.
Frederic is the father of the adaptation of the "design to cost" for intellectual services in France.

Aymeric Libeau
Title: CIO - Vice President Infrastructure & R&D
Bio: The management of infrastructure and R&D Aymeric is supervising includes all the technical aspects (for the company as well as for our customers), whether they are related to corporate needs, resources to complete a project, R&D activities or quality control.
Aymeric is the one who defines the strategy of development of our infrastructure and information system.
This former peacekeeper has led several international operations, in particular in Eastern Europe. He remains operational for some of our customers, whether as an expert in architecture, a project director or consultant in the choice of technologies.

Monica Jiman
Title: Deputy CEO
Bio: Monica graduated in Marketing and Production from the University of Orleans, and joined Pentalog as a trainee.
She then became the Manager of the branch office in Bucharest, today employing 50 people in the field of outsourced software development on the offshore as well as local market in Romania.
In May 2009 she became Chief Operational Officer. Monica is now in charge of operations in Vietnam, Eastern Europe, France and Germany, involving over 300 employees. She manages sales and business lines, the creation of new branch offices, recruitment, human resources and the responsibility of contractual operations.
Monica has been Pentalog's Deputy CEO (Deputy Chief Executive Officer) since August 2011. She is in charge of operational management, including the management of production and production structures, financial and reporting management, administration and development of existing partnerships, supervision of the information systems, technical management and … the incubator.

Alexandra Mondanel
Title: International Operations Officer
Bio: After a 4-month internship within the Pentalog Orleans Team, Alexandra was recruited to develop the company's international activities. She holds a postgraduate degree in International Business and foreign languages and she is European to the core: her mother is German and her father is French; she attended a British University, and used to work for the German subsidiary of a French company before joining Pentalog in 2005. Her ability to speak four languages will be determining to find partners all accross Europe.

Sophie Lelarge
Title: WW Sales and BL Director
Bio: Sophie is the group's Sales Director and manages the 3 Business Lines: Information Systems, Embedded Systems and BPO.
She ensures the dialogue with consultants and project managers, as well as the monitoring of our commitments, in coordination with the project managers.

Pierre Peutin
Title: Head of Business Line for Information Systems
Bio: Pierre entered Pentalog as a developer, in 1999. He has worked on web and client/servers projects, on missions of medium and long duration in both France and Belgium. After several years as a developer, Pierre oriented himself towards Business Intelligence by participating in various reporting projects for customers like PSA Peugeot Citroën, Loxam or the ACTICALL group. Later, Pierre became Project Leader for specific application developments, managing teams of 1 to 7 people based in France and offshore for Pentalog. Pierre then naturally served as an offshore Project Director before taking on the responsibility of the Business Line for Information Systems.
Pierre is presently responsible for writing business proposals, monitoring existing customers, commitment control vis-à-vis our customers on projects, compliance with Pentalog quality system procedures and control and optimization of expenses for the Business Line.

Mickaël Hiver
Title: Head of Business Lines for Embedded Systems & BPO
Bio: Mickaël entered Pentalog as a Network Administrator in February 1997 with the aim to gain global understanding of information technology in order to assist and guide users in meeting their real needs. For 8 years he was an in-house producer for Pentalog clients. With his acquired experience, Mickaël progressively left production to become first a Project Manager, then Project Director and finally the Head of Business Lines for Embedded Systems & BPO.
Mickaël is a hands-on and open person, with an acute sense of organization and priorities. Through his assistance and counseling he gives his clients and prospective clients the opportunity to focus calmly on their actual core business.

Eric Gouin
Title: Administrator
Bio: Eric graduated from a renown school of Physics and Chemistry in Paris. While he was a student he used to develop websites related to his student activities.
After two research internships within a French company producing mobile phone components in the Sophia-Antipolis Technopole, he joined the IT world in which he held several key positions.
He now is a finance and management control consultant.

Aleth Delcenserie
Title: Quality Manager
Bio: Associate-founder of Pentalog and board member, Aleth Delcenserie first evolved in the graphics department of the company. Gifted with a strong sense of organization and a taste for detail, she conducted with rigorous methodology publishing projects and electronic media for over ten years, and launched the Pentalog BPO-DTP sector at the end of 2005.
From September 2007, Aleth has been responsible for the definition and for the implementation of the Pentalog Quality Policy, leading to the ISO 9001:2008 certification of the group, on December 24, 2008.
As the Director of Quality Control, Aleth is now based in Moldova since 1 January 2009, where she now shares her time between coaching project managers in implementing effectiveness control and the progress of Pentalog Quality.

Blog/ISD/

[Episode 07] Migrating the instant messaging service to Google

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The history of our messaging server began in 1996 with Oléane which included 10 accounts. In order to optimize costs, we internalized this service in 1998 and managed our server on our own with a sendmail (up to 80 accounts). In 2002, in order to improve services and facilitate administration, we deployed Extremail, an OpenSource solution in linux (up to 250 accounts). In 2007, we decided to reinforce our messaging service and have a multiuser calendar program by deploying Zimbra, initially with its community version and then with the commercial version in order to have the push mode for mobile equipment. We now have more than 600 users and we are trying to further improve the service in order to make sure that we reach the 1,000 or 2,000-account milestone in the best conditions.

The aspects that we needed to improve were:
* Increasing messaging availability: In 2010, we had 600 minutes of unavailability due to different reasons and never at the right moment.
* Reducing mail delivery time: With the arrival of significant mail flows, the antivirus and antispam server delayed the delivery of emails by a few minutes (sometimes by up to 30 minutes).
* Reinforcing security: Having a better performing antispam and antivirus engine.
* Having a storing space: This means that we need to offer everyone the possibility to leave their emails on the server in order to ensure better preservation.

And all this starting from what we already have: push mode for mobiles, intensive use of distribution lists, user-friendly administration. We also needed to reduce the budget allocated to platform administration and maintenance. Even though we have the adequate infrastructure, we didn’t need to maintain the platform in our infrastructure.

We have compared the capabilities of Zimbra 7 and Google Apps for Business. On paper, Google has a high rate of availability (30 minutes of unavailability in 2009, 0 minutes in 2010). Delivery times are less than 5s between a Pentalog domain and Google (with an attachment of 100k). The storing space per user is 25GB. The annual net cost is 50 euros/user. The cost for zimbra with the same features (maintenance, storing space etc.) is 108 euros / year / person. These costs are calculated for 600 people including migration, maintenance and actions taken over three years. If we leave storing aside in this cost calculation, we obtain almost the same cost.

The question is more related to security. Can we trust Google’s security systems? We can also call into question the security of an outsourced service in which a great amount of information is sent. Although we are constantly investing in security, we cannot rise to Google’s level. Google has certificates on infrastructure security which allow to accept outsourcing. Despite having consulted local economic intelligence services, they don’t have a definite answer to the question. We need to pay particular attention to transfers (encrypting exchanges via https) and to the security level of passwords.

In the end, why have we chosen Google? Although messaging will remain an essential tool, it will decrease in importance as our social network develops. The messaging service and calendar will be the first functions to be used, but the scope will extend to Google Docs, Google Chat and we are already looking into ways to integrate Google Apps into our information system.

In order to prepare this migration, we have paid a great deal of attention to change management:
* A team consisting of 25 pilot users has been created (different levels of responsibility, different locations, different needs etc.).
* The satisfaction survey (carried out using GoogleDocs) sent at the end of the test period yielded positive results and enabled us to identify subjects on which we needed to provide more information. I would like to thank them for their participation. They also offered arguments for choosing this solution.
* A presentation will be made in all offices to explain how this migration is going to be carried out.
* We are already posting best practices into our internal knowledge base (text and videos).

The migration in itself will not actually be risky. Messages have already been delivered for the two platforms (Zimbra in production and Google) in order that pilot users continue using Google Apps. The longest phase will consist in transferring the entire Zimbra content over to Google. We will therefore have no service availability breakdowns, except for the history feature during the transfer phase.

Before the end of February we will therefore have changed our messaging solution. It will open new possibilities for us. Everyone will benefit from it in no time. If some of you have fears, don’t hesitate to contact me or the local infrastructure team so that we may dispel them.

[Episode 06] Information system security concerns everyone