Several months ago, Cornel Fatulescu, Sophie Lelarge and me decided to set up a new high-level department dedicated to consulting operations in various fields with the aim of challenging the European leaders in discipline, based on many advantages that Pentalog has. These last years, we sometimes had to coexist with consultants from prestigious consultancies, invoicing between €750 and €1500 a day without making any difference compared to our best collaborators. Thus, we decided to reconcile Offshore and Consulting with the purpose of improving clients’ ROI for this type of service.

1. Geographical advantages:

Our presence in 8 European cities and in one Asian city enables us to incorporate diverse fields of expertise and activities, to have offices in the West, as well as in the East, and resources which are closer to the majority of our European clients. There are cities where we process very large industrial requests for embedded development, others where we are champions of web services and e-commerce and others where we focus on Business Intelligence, banking… All our experts speak both French and English, some speak Russian or German, others speak Asian languages.

2. A logic of figures and sizes:

- Projects involving up to 100 employees, using V-cycle, traditional methods or agile methodology, in various fields, with outstanding satisfaction and recommendation rates, have made us count on genuine experts in project development, regardless of the scale of the project. At present, all our clients acknowledge our high level of expertise in the field.

- 700 excellent employees among which there are undoubtedly outstanding personalities.

3. Multifaceted approach:

- 200 Java developers, around one hundred PHP developers, 130 specialists in embedded, M2M capacities, 80 dotnet developers, over 30 architects.

- A multispecialist positioning: Cloud Computing, e-commerce, banking, telecommunication, energy, healthcare, food, industry…

Starting with these 3 key advantages, we have selected some twenty persons in 4 countries, available to assist our clients in 40 countries where we had business operations in 2011. We plan to serve them in two ways:
- in a time rating consulting mode (foreseeing €400 to €600 for a remote intervention in one of our sites and €600 to €1100 for an intervention in Western Europe).
- in a fixed-price service, advantageous for our clients mobilizing Pentalog’s nearshore and offshore resources, and eager to reach an undeniable level of excellence in their developments (foreseeing an additional charge of €3 to €15 per man day of offshore development).

In all cases, the client will PAY LESS, this is MY PLEDGE, for the best level of consulting in Europe, exactly as we have succeeded regarding the software development. All those who will help us advertise our business and win budgets in consulting shall themselves receive a pro rata time credit. Already, in order to increase the existing team, we will create in the following months 2 positions in our headquarters in Orleans.

You can find our full offer on: http://www.pentalog.fr/offre/pentalog_institute.htm

The whole operation, including works, should result in a €2M budget, which translates into €2300 per square meter. Compared to the prices in the French province cities, this is a very competitive rate, especially for an asset located very close to a motorway exit and less than 10 km away from a city center. It is far less expensive than a small scale office in Paris (4 times cheaper) or than whatever we could purchase in Bucharest (around 3000). This price is close to the one we would have obtained in Brasov, whereas we will now be in an area which is part of Unesco World Heritage! The acquisition of this outstanding asset, which will contribute, as Frédéric asserted, to the group’s communication, shall have a minor influence on the structural costs of our IT company, which will slightly increase by 1 to around 1.5%. Related to our current sales figure, this means that our expenses will increase by around 0.5 %.

I really wanted to inform everybody on this aspect as I can imagine our competitors commenting on the burst of our costs. Now, we all know what to comment back.

- 26% growth in sales figure, under Pentalog brand, while Syntec federation claims only 3.6% (software, services and IT consulting).

- 35% growth not including the joint venture with Ausy group, which recorded 19% growth.

- over 35% growth in sales figure, including the contributions of PentaLabbs , Pentalog’s incubation service.

- 3 new companies have joined Pentalabbs in 2011: Easyflyer (1 out of 5 French leaders in online printing), Invelia (business bank specialized in IT), Web IT Factory; the overall sales figure of the incubated companies is increasing by 200%; Pentalabbs already incorporates 5 start-ups.

- Sales of our services in 9 countries, for a presence in 6 countries and a sales force in 3 countries.

- No 2 in IT services in Romania.

- No 1 of the French-speaking IT offshore/nearshore.

- No 1 in nearshore business in France.

- €21,5M of sales figure.

- Ranked for the 3rd consecutive time in the classification made in 2011 by Deloitte Technology Fast 500 of the EMEA area (+371% over 5 years).

- Two digit return rate, despite a small slump compared to 2010.

- Opening of a new delivery center in Romania, in the city of Cluj, with 35 employees in December 2011.

- 79% of the actual sales came from competence centers (in multi-year contracts), 13% from fixed-price contracts and 8% from technical support and consulting.

- 100% of production or administrative employees are assessed on a daily basis based on 25 to 40 criteria.

- €1M spent on training.

- The number of training days performed in 2011 is soaring: +58%.

- 57 persons have benefited from a training in project management during the year.

- 121 persons received a quality awareness training.

- 354 persons received French, English, German and Korean classes.

- 590 received a training of some kind in 2011.

- Recommendation rate is soaring, reaching a record figure of 94%.

- Strong increase of internal satisfaction rate: 74%.

- 92% of the company’s capital is held by employees: 17 French, 16 Romanians and 3 Moldavians.

- The global manpower exceeded 700 employees.

- 180 persons have been recruited in Romania and Moldova.

- Specialization in E-Commerce, becoming one of the European experts in the field: over 75 developers involved in projects of the major European players, 20% of the sales figure.

- Specialization in Télécom: 100 engineers developing 2G&3G&4G mobile platforms, 45 persons in billing systems, securization of client workstations and parental control solutions.

- 50% of sales figure signed outside France (18% of foreign sales in Romania, 37% in Germany, 34% in Switzerland, 8% in Belgium and 3% in Austria, Moldova, Israel and Vietnam).

- 82 000 visits per month on the premises of the Pentalog group at the end of the year, that is more than 2700 visits/days!

- Creation of Pentalog TV, our internal Web TV, producing corporate videos and shows on different complex themes.

- Renewal of ISO 9001:2008 certificate.

- 25 new clients, that is 2 per month.

- Growing dependency rate compared to the previous year. The largest client represents 20.3% of the sales figure. This figure is bound to decrease during the following months.

- Backlog 2012: €18 mil. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the IT offshore press review. ComputerWeekly announces that Indian IT services firms are becoming attractive options for strategic partnerships with European enterprises as IT budget constraints persist. Do you agree?

- Offshoring to take a larger slice of flat IT budgets (February 9, 2012, Computer weekly)
- Locals have edge despite Europe IT talent influx to Asia (February 13, 2012, ZDNet Asia)
- The IT Pro report: Cloud Computing in 2012 (February 3, 2012, IT Pro)
- Thousands protest ACTA across Europe (February 13, 2012, IT Pro)
- IT industry must drive broadband to boost UK economy, Intellect tells Annual Regent Conference 2012 (February 9, 2012, Computer weekly)
- 10 Business Skills Every IT Pro Must Master (February 9, 2012, CIO)
- Apple Innovation: 10 Future Tech Ideas (February 9, 2012, CIO)
- Lösungen für das Customer-Relationship-Management (February 10, 2012, Computerwoche)
- Business Intelligence – auch für die IT (February 10, 2012, Computerwoche)
- Big Data noch kein Business-Thema (February 9, 2012, Computerwoche)
- Italienischer IT-Markt auf Wachstumskurs (February 8, 2012, IT Business)
- IT-Ausgaben steigen um 5 Prozent (February 7, 2012, Silicon)
- Minus 16 Prozent: Westeuropäischer PC-Markt leidet (February 7, 2012, Inside IT)

Welcome to the fresh IT offshore press review.

- Opacity: Why IT services aren’t services at all (February 2, 2012, Computer World)
- Facebook IPO details strategy and its vision of itself (February 2, 2012, Computer World)
- Innovation and optimisation top UK’s 2012 IT agenda, survey shows (February 3, 2012, Computer weekly)
- Java’s road ahead in 2012, Oracle at the wheel (February 5, 2012, Computer weekly)
- Check how cloud computing suppliers are doing compared to traditional IT players (February 3, 2012, Computer weekly)
- Gartner: Start rethinking your application architecture (February 1, 2012, Computer weekly)
- Facebook’s IPO in pictures (February 3, 2012, ZDNet)
- H-1B Workers Are Better Paid, More Educated, Study Finds (February 3, 2012, CIO)
- 8 CRM Trends You Need to Watch (February 3, 2012, CIO)
- Jobmarkt ist so stabil wie nie (January 31, 2012, Spiegel)
- 10 Gründe für gescheiterte BI-Projekte (February 3, 2012, Computer Woche)
- Was bringt Unternehmen Social CRM? (February 3, 2012, ZDNet)
- Social Media und Cloud liegen voll im IT-Trend (February 1, 2012, Automotive IT)
- Internationale Investoren zieht es nach Deutschland (February 1, 2012, Silicon)
- IT-Branche investiert in Deutschland (January 31, 2012, Automotive IT)

Enjoy the IT offshore press review!

- Green IT: In search of an energy yardstick (January 30, 2012, Computer World)
- Twitter’s country-specific blocking brings hazards and hope (January 27, 2012, Computer World)
- Facebook IPO could come next week (January 27, 2012, Computer World)
- Indian IT giant to create thousands of European jobs (January 30, 2012, Computer Weekly)
- Neelie Kroes calls for speedy EU uptake of cloud computing (January 27, 2012, Computer Weekly)
- FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace (January 29, 2012, ZDNet)
- Why you can’t afford to resist the cloud (January 27, 2012, ZDNet)
- How to Document Cloud Design Decisions (January 26, 2012, CIO)
- The Top 10 H-1B Visa Users in the U.S. (January 27, 2012, CIO)
- Deutsche Wirtschaft startet mit Elan ins neue Jahr (January 25, 2012, Handelsblatt)
- Den richtigen Cloud-Anbieter finden (January 30, 2012, CIO)
- 6 IT-Jobs mit Zukunft (January 30, 2012, Computer Woche)
- Die BI-Trends 2012 (January 26, 2012, Computer Woche)
- Android ab 2012 attraktiver für Entwickler als iOS (January 24, 2012, Computer Woche)
- Manager forcieren Outsourcing (January 24, 2012, Automotive IT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From bright ideas to business solutions it is a long way and we all know that the best measure of success is progress. So we need to answer the following requirements:

1.    You need to go FAST!
2.    You need to go FASTER!
3.    You need to be the FASTEST!

There is nothing wrong with this approach from the business point of view. Good time to market means “competitiveness” and sometimes even “continuing to exist”.
But business is also about remaining competitive on a long perspective and when it comes to software development this could have a major drawback. You’ll have to adapt, improve your solution, insert new features so that you gain more share and benefit or just to remain on top. This is where “faster is slower dynamics” apply: your enterprise application doesn’t scale up, you need to add a mobile application but you didn’t thought enough, your application is not stable or secure and now it seems that separation of concerns was doubtful respected. The main topic around the development team is technical debt and they insist on rewriting/refactoring the application. Never felt that? Ok, you can still read my post so that you’ll diminish the need of quick and dirty in your future implementations.

There are lots of reasons you may encounter similar situations but most of them could be treated or at least identified and planned in one particular phase of the project, probably the most important one: project preparation phase. This is where I and my pool of experts share a very important mission in Pentalog:  assisting the client and his team in making the best choices and treating also those concerns that the entire organization may not be aware yet.
After almost 2 decades of experience in launching IT projects, Pentalog proudly announces the appearance of “Start me up!”, a complete framework based on a subset of components:

1.    Team calibration
2.    Project feasibility
3.    Manufacturing
4.    Continuous improvement

Depending on your needs you may choose which subset fit you the most on your future projects.
Starting from project goals to skills management, within team calibration framework, during project launch, you can achieve skills map, team evaluation, organizational chart, integration roadmaps and trainings. If you work already with People Centric, most of the team evaluation part should be already done. In average the length of this phase is 2 days.
Everybody should understand the benefits of products and services! Therefore the entire team, from business stakeholders to software engineers, need to have the same vision on these benefits, and we enhance that within one of the core components of project feasibility framework, called business value framework. Together with risks management, wastes checklist, visibility, planning and estimation tools, around 3 days in average, should help you determine at this early stage the feasibility and major obstacles you have to treat with greater priority. At your wish, we can go even further into architecture review, establishing rules for you, the tests strategy and so forth.
However, launching a software project on good premises seems to be a pretty big phase against agile philosophy where you try to keep the Sprint 0 shorter or equal to the standard sprint size. Here some insights: preparing a continuous integration environment takes from 1 to 5 days, deploy other management tools like for planning, requirements management, quality centers, collaboration tools… again between 1 to 5 days where engineers with different profiles must intervene.. Worst of all is that these tools evolve fast, and you should try to use well tested technology on your projects. How to keep track of all that knowing you have to work on your projects? We are continually doing it by collecting an important amount of data from real projects, so you can benefit when we are building together the basis of your projects. Inside Pentalog it is called Production Fabric. We are able to deploy them fast and easy in our private cloud environment and in less than 1 day we will also configure them, so that it will completely fit your needs. All this is being apart of Manufacturing Framework.
Now let’s look on a representative survey regarding the project preparation phase:

Why representative? Because none of the companies I’ve came into contact with is doing less than 2 weeks for this phase.
With us, you can do it in 1 week. Is that fast enough for you?
To ensure that the organization complies with what you have already defined and adapts it progressively and continually so that you can deliver more business value to your clients, the 4th framework should apply: Continuous improvement. During this phase we integrate a minimum set of practices and tools into your development process and a series of events so that improvements occur. By events we understand from knowledge sharing events to audits. We show you how to do it or we can do it for you. Now you are on the runway, as before, just that this time you know you are on the right one, you benefit from the experience of hundreds of projects and your are between 2-4 times more efficient than before.
Want to see how fast you can get?

The results of a hiring survey show that the IT job market will improve in 2012, but most companies choose not to expand. This and other subjects in the IT offshore press review.

- IT hiring expected to rise in 2012, says survey (December 15, 2011, Computer World)
- Cloud adviser: Where’s your data? (December 13, 2011, Computer World)
- CIOs must trade off innovation and maintenance in 2012
- Pages stalemate for Google, Facebook (December 19, 2011, ZDNet Asia)
- Cloud UI Design Mistakes to Avoid (December 15, 2011, CIO)
- IT Outsourcing Year in Review, Rating Our 2011 Predictions (December 14, 2011, CIO)
- This Week in Cloud: PaaS, Virtualization Leading Trends (December 17, 2011, Silicon Angle)
- France finally realizing what a bad deal euro was (December 19, 2011, Market Watch)
- Euro schlägt D-Mark (December 16, 2011, Focus)
- Europäer laden die meisten Android-Apps (December 16, 2011, CIO)
- Deutsche ITK-Branche “sehr zuversichtlich” (December 15, 2011, Silicon)
- IT-Markt wächst auch 2012 noch kräftig (December 15, 2011, Automotive IT)
- 10 Gartner-Trends bis 2017 (December 13, 2011, CIO)

Gartner considers that IT budgets and responsabilities are moving out of the control of the IT departments and into the hands of others, due to consumerization and cloud computing, among others. That is the Gartner vision for 2012 and the coming years. Don’t miss the other subjects of today’s IT offshore press review.

- Gartner Predictions for 2012: More Cloud, Consumerization, Loss of IT Control (December 2, 2011, CIO)
- Offshoring comes under bipartisan attack in Congress (December 9, 2011, Computer World)
- Mobile device management — what you should know (December 8, 2011, Computer World)
- Twitter unveils redesign, touts ease-of-use (December 8, 2011, Computer World)
- Making industrialisation work (December 2011, Computer Weekly)
- SOA paves way to ‘postmodern’ software regime: Gartner’s Anne Thomas Manes (December 11, 2011, ZDnet)
- 4 Facebook Security Tips to Stay Safe in 2012 (December 8, 2011, CIO)
- Infographic: Facebook Reveals Top Trends of 2011 (December 7, 2011, CIO)
- Beware Cloud Computing Advice from IT Research Firms (December 9, 2011, CIO)
- Inflationsangst in Deutschland wächst (December 8, 2011, Capital)
- Cloud-Services aus Deutschland (December 9, 2011, Computer Woche)
- IT-Budgets der Unternehmen steigen (December 8, 2011, Automotive IT)
- Bilanz 2011: Ist nach der Cloud vor der Cloud? (December 8, 2011, Silicon)
- ERP-Systeme – zu langsam für das Business? (December 7, 2011, Computer Woche)
- ITK-Branche will Frauen als Manager (December 5, 2011, Automotive IT)

Following a 1000 km road trip and 5 days of audits performed on Pentalog sites in Brasov, Iasi and Chisinau, the AFNOR auditor has just decided in favour of the renewal of our ISO 9001:2008 certificate*, and its extension to People Centric, our recruitment subsidiary.

During one week, the top and middle management, our sales activities, our human resources management activities (recruitment, skills management, training), our support activities (purchasing, information systems), our improvement loop, as well as a dozen projects have been audited. The sampling was highly representative for the diversity of projects of the group: team made up of 25 to 40 individuals, small teams, fixed-price projects, projects entirely steered by clients, outsourcing, recruitment, French projects, English projects; French, Belgian, German, Swiss customers …

In all the audited sites, the auditor was able to acknowledge the compliance and the functionality of our quality management system, its flexibility and improvement, as well as its suitability to our needs for growth and responsiveness.
Thus, there are numerous strong points emphasizing the involvement of the management in order to support and promote the continuous improvement in Pentalog (it outsourcing company), the maintenance of our growth rate and our financial results during this crisis period, a high recommendation rate from the part of our customers (93.55%), a well implemented system for the assignment of duties, the capacity of our system to adjust to our customers’ special requirements, a good use of tools to support our processes, an internal and customer communication, as well as a recognized sharing of good practices and knowledge.
In addition, several progress trackings, all related to the system improvement loop, have been identified in order to continue to improve our efficiency and our know-how.

Even if it’s not in my nature, today I am really proud of the progress we achieved together, over the past 4 years, and of the quality of the projects and activities we have presented during this week. Everybody’s involvement and efforts have not been for nothing, and today they are fairly rewarded.
Many thanks to all the audited persons for their participation, and to all Pentalog employees who invest themselves, day by day, for the satisfaction of our clients, of their clients, and to sustain the growth of company for all.

*Certified activities: SOFTWARE DESIGN AND PRODUCTION, SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT, TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE, INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT, BUSINESS PROCESSES OUTSOURCING and RECRUITEMENT.
Sites concerned by the scope of the certification: France: Orléans ; Romania: Bucharest, Brasov, Iasi, Sibiu ; Moldova : Chisinau. Companies concerned: Pentalog, Pentalog Technology (JV with Ausy), People Centric.

Q4 is very similar to the previous quarter, being also marked by a strong boost in project renewals for 2012 and fairly higher new biz order intentions.

In France, just as in Q3, the growth is mainly due to the extension of existing contracts and very few new contracts signed in Q4. Our strategic trend towards e-Commerce has been strengthening , our efforts and the projects we have undertaken have assured us recognition as European experts in the field. The orders from a web services and e-commerce leader on the French market announced in Q3 have already increased by 25%. In Belgium, we have concluded a new collaboration agreement with with a digital native service company, for several .NET and Sharepoint projects.

We have recently signed our first contract with an Italian client in the field of embedded R&D. At the end of 2011, this amounts to 10 countries where we have sold our services this year! The fact that we have local presence in 6 countries and commercial teams in only 3 of them is an unquestionable proof of effectiveness for the commercial virtualization (Digital Salesforce) strategy undertaken in collaboration with Virtual Fanatic.

In Germany, 2 new clients have started their collaboration with Pentalog (IT services company). The 1st one is the e-commerce department of one of the largest European media groups, with more than 100,000 employees worldwide and a sales figures of 15 billion euro. They have entrusted us with the development of modules such as “payment gateway”. The 2nd-one, a German IT consulting company, has chosen our services for developing its Business Intelligence applications.
Another German software publisher in the health sector, in Microsoft technologies, has practically doubled its investment with Pentalog.

The sales activities undertaken in Vietnam and coordinated by the former Delivery Center Manager in Hanoi, Tuan Nguyen Quoc, are beginning to bear fruit. A first project, albeit small, for an insurance broker has been agreed upon at the beginning of this quarter. We target Vietnamese or foreign privately owned companies in the banking, industry, telecommunication and insurance sectors. Furthermore, we are in the process of developing on regional markets such as Japan, Korea, Singapore or Malaysia by preparing a roadshow during the first quarter of next year. We have recently attended the ASEAN forum at Kuala Lumpur. Our aim was to meet not only potential Malaysian clients for nearshoring, but also French-speaking companies who want to enter the Asian market, for offshoring.

In accordance with the Q3 forecast, we have reached 700 Pentalog employees in Q4!

The delivery center in Cluj will reach a number of 35 employees by the end of January. It is the delivery center which has reached its break-even point in the shortest period of time in our history. Bucharest and Iasi have constantly increased their workforce. Therefore, we have exceeded the number of 700 employees in 2011, without reaching the originally forecast number of 770 employees. This downturn is definitely related to the new economic crisis.

Although the growth rate in S2 has reduced by 50% comparing to S1, once again we have maintained a double digit profitability level. Our annual growth under the Pentalog brand name amounts to 26%. It even exceeds 33% if we take into account the Pentalabbs’ (Incubator) contribution. There has been a commercial boost in December. Given the sharp increase of our recommendation rate which has reached a record of 94%, it is by no means surprising to see new leads emerging. We were pleased to welcome two of our major clients who visited us during Q4; they insisted on thanking the teams in person and on presenting their strategies for 2012, including the roles of Pentalog’s teams for accomplishing these strategies.

2012 is expected to be a difficult year in our sector, and we approach it with prudent optimism, but with serenity. Our equity capital and our cash position have reached a record level and our profitability level is constantly 30% above the average in our business sector. Our key strategic elements remain focused on innovation, quality and ongoing effort towards customer satisfaction. We always bear in mind that these clear policy lines enabled Pentalog to outpace all its competitors in terms of growth and profitability in 2009, a dreadful year for many companies in the IT sector.

We start this week’s IT offshore press review with an article on Gartner’s top predictions for IT organisations and users for 2012.

- Gartner Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organisations and Users for 2012 and Beyond (December 2, 2011, CFO News)
- Mobile giving grows up (December 2, 2011, Computer World)
- Developers see growing HTML5 importance (December 5, 2011, ZDNet Asia)
- Cloud at ‘chapter zero’ presents opportunities (December 1, 2011, ZDNet Asia)
- Google’s highly profitable secret war against small businesses and jobs (November 30, 2011, ZDNet)
- Is Cloud Support ‘Racing to the Bottom? (December 1, 2011, CIO)
- Skills-Based Visa Change Helps Some, Hurts Others (November 30, 2011, CIO)
- Google’s Android 4.0 Ported to X86 Processors (December 1, 2011, CIO)
- The Big Data of Social Media: Balancing Methods and Mayhem (December 2, 2011, Silicon Angle)
- Romanian National Bank organizes public bidding for IT maintenance services (December 2, 2011, Business Review)
- Arbeitslosigkeit geht überraschend stark zurück (November 30, 2011, Welt)
- 2012: Die Bedrohungen für die IT nehmen drastisch zu (December 2, 2011, Automotive IT)
- So ergeht es Firmen in der IT-Wolke (December 2, 2011, Computer Woche)
- Was die Systemhäuser 2012 erwartet (November 30, 2011, Computer Woche)
- Lösungen für Enterprise-Resource-Planning (November 29, 2011, Computer Woche)
- Gartner: Weltweiter Servermarkt wächst um 7,2 Prozent (November 29, 2011, ZDNet)
- Der BI-Markt in Deutschland (November 28, 2011, Silicon)

Here’s the IT offshore press review! Enjoy!

- Gartner: IT challenges in the current economic crisis (November 17, 2011, Computer Weekly)
- Hot skills in IT (November 16, 2011, Computer Weekly)
- 10 things you must teach new Linux users (November 21, 2011, ZDNet Asia)
- Resume Makeover: How to Write an IT Executive Resume (November 16, 2011, CIO)
- Two Top Indian Mobile Companies Under Investigation (November 20, 2011, CIO)
- Exclusive Research Shows CIOs Embrace Consumerization of IT (November 18, 2011, CIO)
- PWC: Retail CEOs Turn to Global and E-Commerce Expansion Strategies (November 16, 2011, E-commerce Facts)
- Android läuft auf über der Hälfte der Smartphones (November 16, 2011, Silicon)
- Keine Angst vor Big Data (November 15, 2011, Computer Woche)
- Embedded Software macht CIOs Probleme (November 14, 2011, CIO)
- Nur Deutschland ist sicher, alles andere geht unter (November 16, 2011, Welt)
- Deutsche Wirtschaft wächst im dritten Quartal wieder kräftig (November 15, 2011, Handelsblatt)