ITO Insight

Capgemini has briefed NelsonHall on its February-announced Smart Water Services Platform (SWSP) SaaS offering. SWSP is a workflow engine for managing radio-based water meters and provides functionality around planning, meter rollout, operations and data collection, maintenance and analytics.

SWSP is a functional extension of Skvader' ACS smart meter applications that Capgemini has adapted to the water industry. Changes in its smart energy software include adaptation to radio-based networks, and new functionality e.g. supply water cut and client services functionality such as return of consumption, over consumption and leakage. Capgemini is currently working on creating APIs for integrating its software with CRM and ERP applications.

Capgemini is positioning SWSP as offering an inexpensive alternative to both water utilities' internal IT services teams and also competitors; in particular, Capgemini highlights its multi-tenant architecture, its pre-integrated APIs and usage-based pricing.

Capgemini has structured the pricing of SWSP to be module-based and offer some pricing flexibility to clients willing to use parts of the SaaS software rather than its full functionality. The company estimates that it has a significant pipeline, with several deals at an "advanced stage" and likely to be finalized by end Q2 2012.

Atos has recently held a briefing on its Systems Integration (SI) business unit. The unit is Atos' second largest business unit, after Managed Services, its IT infrastructure management unit. SI had 2011 pro-forma revenues of €2.2bn. The unit was created as the result of the merger of Atos Origin's SI business with the own professional services and application management businesses from Siemens IT Solutions and Services (SIS) and has a headcount of 22,000. Atos has made a number of changes to the unit, focusing on fixed priced and SLA-based activity, transferring its staff augmentation business to the newly-created Consulting and Technology Services unit (€0.6bn in revenues), which also includes its consulting activities.

SI has three main lines of services:

• Solutions (50% of SI revenues; ~€1.1bn)
• SAP services (19%; €0.4bn)
• AM (31.3%; €0.69bn).

Revenue breakdown by geography is

• Germany 24%
• France 17%
• 11% each from U.K./Ireland, Benelux and CEE.

Its largest verticals are public, health & transportation (31%); manufacturing, retail & services (25%) and telecom, media & technology (21%). Financial services and the whole Siemens group represent respectively 8% and 10% of SI revenues.

Atos has been working on several initiatives including the initial integration of Atos Origin with SIS and its resulting reorganization. SI has structured its sales and delivery organization by vertical market, both onshore and in its global delivery network. The unit has also relocated and centralized some of the solutioning activity to India, away from country-based solutioning. Simultaneously, Atos SI is working on centralizing contract governance through a risk management approach and reliance on best practices and global processes.

On-going initiatives including the rationalization of its service portfolio, a focus on its cost structure through further rationalization and industrialization of its service delivery as well as from offshoring.

In the service portfolio area; Atos SI has selected 45 global offerings, both vertical and horizontal Examples in its Solution service line include:

• Transportation: customer experience and solutions for airports, together with Siemens AG
• Civil & National Security
• Multi-media asset management
• ECM with vertical flavors including for the insurance industry
• Manufacturing with PLM offering
• BSS through a partnership with Huawai.

Atos SI is focusing on technology partnerships, with an initial focus on SAP. SIS has changed the scale of the SAP services business of Atos, who now has 10,000 SAP-related personnel, of which 5,000 in its SI business, giving it significantly increased scale among European onshore vendors. It now wants to be further involved in SAP product launches e.g. HANA.

The partnership strategy of Atos SI also includes Microsoft, for which it has just created a global service line, focusing especially on Microsoft Azure, and Oracle, a work-in-progress.

In addition, Atos recently announced two other strategic related to cloud computing partnerships and that are located in its Systems Integration arm:

• EMC and VMware: Atos has announced the creation of an Atos-controlled vendor providing cloud services, Canopy. Canopy is to have a relative comprehensive IaaS, SaaS, PaaS and consulting offering and is to become one of the main forces of Atos in cloud computing. Atos is investing tens of millions of euros and has big hopes for Canopy to grow in the coming future. The joint venture is not yet set up but Atos is reporting a strong pipeline and is hoping to sign its first deals in the coming weeks. Atos highlights that the Canopy structure is to be more effective than a traditional partnership by securing from partners. Canopy is to take place into Atos' WebSphere cloud computing offering which also includes Azure and Office 365. See article for more information.
• Along Canopy, Atos announced last year the creation of Yunano, a JV with Chinese ERP ISV UFIDA to market UFIDA's ERP and CRM software products initially in EMEA. Yunano is in the process of finishing localizing and translating the CRM applications to English by Q2 2012 with further local European languages to be available from H2 2012 onwards. Atos SI is yet to announce new clients for Yunano but hints at additional soft benefits from the venture including acting as a reference partner for Chinese firms expanding in Europe, as well as being invited in China by Ufida's client conference as an important service partner in China. See article for more information.

Further offshoring and development in India is Atos' next step for Systems Integration. Atos SI currently has ~5,500 personnel in India). India accounts for a NelsonHall estimated 80% of its low-cost country presence and is expected to increase in size significantly. Meanwhile, the company is also counting on its nearshore presence in Argentina (Spanish-speaking clients and the U.S. market), Poland (for German-speaking clients), Russia, Morocco (French) and to a lower extent in Russia.

To accelerate its development in India and its sales of India-delivered services, Atos SI is working on an India direct initiative, still in its early days. Under this initiative, Atos SI is to target in priority the U.S. and the U.K. as well as the ME. The unit hints at taking a vertical selective approach, emphasizing initially the manufacturing sector. To achieve growth with India Direct, Atos SI is taking a three-tier approach for each major account with a client partner in the country, a delivery manager based in India

Atos SI is also expanding its geographical focus to emerging economies. The unit is developing in priority in Russia and in the Middle East, having set up offices in Qatar, United Arab Emirates (Dubai and Abu Dhabi) and Ryad (Saudi Arabia). The company highlights setting up office in Gulf Countries takes time but it now has a local partnership in the country (as required by law in most Gulf Countries). Atos SI claims already several contract wins in the Gulf region.

Capgemini has announced a five-year partnership with EMC Corporation to jointly develop and go-to-market with a series of cloud computing offerings.

The two companies will initially roll-out a storage-as-a-service offering, with data stored on EMC hardware which will be located in Capgemini's datacenters

They are also planning other offerings including messaging-as-a-service, which will be launched soon for specific vertical market segments and clients located in various locations including North America, the U.K., the Netherlands, the Nordics, France, Germany, China and Brazil.

Capgemini has announced EMC as one of Capgemini's top 6 technology partners, alongside IBM, HP, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle. The alliance is far-reaching and includes the full EMC portfolio of products and solutions.

The agreement has three main items:

• Capgemini is refreshing and standardizing its storage technology in all its datacenters. The company is to offer a pay-as-you-use service based on its EMC storage hardware
• EMC and Capgemini will have a joint go-to-market strategy and partner in developing new offerings. A joint organization with three layers of management will drive this effort. The highest level of this structure will include Patrick Nicolet, the head of Capgemini's infrastructure services and EMC vice chairman, Bill Teuber. The unit will also include an executive committee to drive the operations on a tactical level and an operational organization with 5 to 10 personnel including sales developers, project managers, solution architects and technical experts
• Capgemini is to work with EMC for responding to IT infrastructure service bids, when relevant.

The companies already have a foundation client for their messaging-as-a service offering , encompassing 70,000 mail boxes, that was an existing Capgemini client.

As part of Wipro's emphasis on cloud computing, the testing practice of Wipro has unveiled several cloud testing offerings. Wipro has segmented its offerings, which are targeted at both cloud vendors and "cloud consumers" (enterprise clients).

• For "cloud consumers", Wipro has built its offering around three potential scenarios 1. Migration of on-premise applications to the cloud 2. Migration of applications running on virtualized environments to the cloud 3. Testing of new applications developed on the cloud. Examples of clients for this offering include:
  - Configuring a salesforce.com (SFDC) application for a client and migrating the data from the previous on-premise application to SFDC. Services provided range from functional to non-functional testing
  - Helping a client to move its applications to a cloud. The client has completed the deployment of a private cloud in its premises and is now investigating which of its 500 applications to migrate and how.
• For cloud solution providers, Wipro has built its offering around primarily two scenarios: 1. Testing of IaaS offerings 2. Testing of SaaS applications from ISVs
  - For a large telecoms vendor in APAC, which has built an IaaS offering, Wipro has provided functional and non-functional testing services. The company has taken a role-based approach to verify workflows, from self-service, identity management, automated provisioning and billing. The project had a strong emphasis on OSS and BSS systems integration testing. It has also performed performance testing for the client, looking at potential stress points such as web portal and the web services layer
  - For a chip manufacturer, which provides a design tool to its end-clients: Wipro has helped its clients to move from a license- to a SaaS- based offering
  - Additionally, Wipro has tested a "cloud gateway" for one of its clients. The cloud gateway is used to order and consume cloud computing from private or public cloud. It also helps to record and measure how internal users are using the private or public cloud.

Wipro indicates it has several other offerings around cloud computing testing that are forthcoming.

CSC has announced the launch of a new private cloud computing offering for development of Java-based applications. The offering is based on WMware technology inlcuding vFabric and the Spring Framework.

Services to be provided by CSC include:

• Assessment services
• Consolidation and transformation of applications
• Migration services.

NelsonHall recently talked with Geoff Thompson, Chairman of the TMMi Foundation and also Chairman of the U.K. Testing Board. He is also Consulting Director for U.K.-based software testing consultancy Experimentus.

The U.K. Testing Board (UKTB) and the TMMi Foundation have largely complementary roles.

UKTB has a training and accreditation role. It was founded in April 2007 and is the country member representing the U.K. on the International Software Qualification Testing Board (ISTQB), which has 47 country members. The ISTQB largely develops syllabi on software testing. Through its country members, it has certified over 150,000 testing professionals. It has developed three certification levels for testing professional: Foundation, Advanced and Expert Level.

The UKTB has several roles as a country member of the ISTQB

• Provide input in the syllabi and rules drafted by the ISTQB
• Accredit training vendors in the U.K., which are providing software testing training based upon the ISTQB Syllabi
• Organize exams in the U.K to individuals. It uses ISEB/BCS for conducting exams at the Foundation and Advanced Levels as well as Thomson Prometic and PearsonVue for computer-based exams.

In addition, the UKTB is also working with schools and universities to include Software Testing within their curriculum.

While UKTB is focused at the training and certification level, the TMMi Foundation focuses on creating the equivalent of CMMI in the testing arena. The result is a testing process assessment model, TMMi. TMMi was built to be vendor-neutral and that differentiates it from the TPI methodology, which is marketed by Sogeti.

TMMi enables the assessment of the maturity of testing organizations on five levels, from 1-Immature to 5-Highly mature. The TMMi Foundation released the details for levels 2 and 3 in September 2009. The details for levels 4 & 5 are set for release at the EuroSTAR conference in Copenhagen in December 2010.

The TMMi Foundation is expanding its role from a pure process improvement methodology focus to an accreditation standpoint. It has the objective of understanding and controlling the ecosystems of consulting firms and consultants that provide TMMi-based maturity level assessments for their clients. The TMMi Foundation, which is at the beginning of this effort, has accredited two firms, Experimentus and Improve. The organization has also identified 100 individuals or Software testing consulting vendors which are using the TMMI model without TMMi Foundation accreditation.

Among the priorities of the TMMi Foundation are to:

• Develop its relations with the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon, which initially developed the CMMi model. The TMMi methodology was largely inspired by the CMMi
• Expand the number of accredited assessment companies and individuals.

On a personal note, Geoff Thompson would also like to increase the coordination of both TMMi and UKTB, with the TMMi Foundation moving increasingly into the certification space.

Orange Business Services is reporting accelerating demand for its packaged cloud computing offering, named IT Plan: the company expects the number of desktops it manages to grow by 220% in 2010. Demand is strongest in the banking sector and law firms (for confidentiality and security reasons) and hotel chains (for easy deployment of desktops and applications in different locations). Orange Business Services is also seeing potential in transport and airline carriers. Some of this success is due to its sales strategy; Orange Business Services has developed an indirect sales channel through partnering with vertical market-specific ISVs e.g. Amadeus or DDS. The offering, which initially targets SMBs is seeing accelerating demand from large enterprises, initially for small deployments.

The IT Plan offering, launched in H1 2008, includes both desktop virtualization and application virtualization. It provides access to Office applications, communication and email, as well as applications from ISVs e.g. Sage and SAP for its All in One software product and allows the virtualization of custom applications. It relies on virtualization technology from Citrix at the desktop level and from WMware at the server level.

The IT Plan offering has a price starting at €59 per user per month, with an ARPU of ~€120. Clients tend to purchase over time additional services, e.g. additional storage, applications or higher SLAs. The company highlights that it is monitoring its client satisfaction levels closely in order to limit client churn.

The IT Plan offering is part of the company's cloud computing offering and its transformation towards becoming an "IT operator", complementary to being a telecom operator. The "IT Operator" strategy consists of offering IT services, initially through virtual desktops and servers, on a pay-per-use model.

This year, the Capgemini Group has been unveiling its five 'Business as Unusual' initiatives. With these offerings, which include enterprise software testing, Capgemini Group is looking to generate €800m new bookings in 2010.

The work around enterprise software testing includes a coordination of the offerings from various Capgemini business units: Technology Services, Outsourcing Services, Financial Services and the Sogeti Group.

As part of this broad initiative, Sogeti France is rolling out its IT infrastructure testing offering across a number of different countries. The service goes further than the usual performance testing offerings, which are usually focused on determining the scalability, reliability and resource usage of the servers on which the applications are hosted. Testing services offered take place in particular at the end-user workplace level around:

• Packaging of applications
• Deployment of applications to PCs, servers and on mid-range computers
• Migration of operating systems (including to Windows 7), messaging applications and middleware (EAIs and databases), and for specific applications such as SAP and vertically-specific applications.

Sogeti France's testing offer also extends to testing of migration at the server level and can be integrated into more classic testing activities related to corrective maintenance. At the server level, Sogeti conducts pre-compatibility activities between several versions of OS, databases and applications before they are moved to production.

Sogeti highlights it is conducting testing not on test environments but also on production ones:

• For a client in the tourism business, Sogeti is conducting load testing, performance testing and continuity on the live production servers hosting the client's ecommerce applications
• For a telco client, Sogeti is testing the provisioning business processes of the client, as well as providing disaster and recovery services, and performance testing on live production servers.

The offering has been popular and already represents ~20% of software testing revenues of Sogeti France. Sogeti has set up a delivery center in Pau (South of France), initially with ~80 personnel, focused mainly on desktop-related activities. This site complements Sogeti's Bordeaux test factory (120 personnel), which is more focused on application testing. Overall, Sogeti employs ~500 professional testers in France, plus ~150 counterparts in India.