Thierry Siouffi, Executive VP, Business Integration Solutions
As the Internet brings with it new kinds of competition, businesses are having to reinvent themselves using digital technology. To achieve this, integration is becoming a critical challenge, especially when it comes to vital issues like data management, the cloud and security. With its unique wealth of expertise, Bull is ideally placed to act as an effective integrator/partner for the digital enterprise.
No matter what sector they operate in, businesses now recognize that the giants of the Web are becoming their biggest competitors. The big names in the digital world are winning over their customers, overturning people’s normal patterns of buying behaviour and shifting their expectations and priorities. As using the Internet becomes second nature for all of us, it’s changing the game in every single area. What’s more, these new players are also managing to maintain their differentiation, by imposing new practices at such a rate that even some of them are struggling to keep up… whatever happened to the Internet pioneers who missed the boat when it came to Web 2.0 or mobile applications?
In the face of this kind of competition, traditional businesses are not necessarily at a disadvantage. Indeed, they have two big assets: data (they hold a huge wealth of information, experience and cultural understanding about their customers and markets) and close local proximity (not just to their customers, but also to their partners, suppliers and a whole ecosystem with shared interests). The big question they are asking themselves right now is how to make the most of both these assets, whilst also stepping up to the levels of functionality, agility and performance that will enable them to compete effectively against their inherently digital rivals.
Digital technology: disrupting the value chain
The answer inevitably involves using digital systems. New technologies are moving beyond the back office, management and administration to get closer to the core of the business – supporting operations, customer relationships and experiences – to transform the enterprise in two fundamental ways. On the one hand, they enable much more agile, collaborative and effective ways of working, which make much better use of the available information. On the other hand, they allow organizations to develop innovative applications so they can differentiate themselves, create more value and even change the traditional proposition on which the business was built. In transport, for example, digital technology – from on-line reservation systems to on-board ‘infotainment’ – is transforming the entire landscape, the whole value chain.
In order to build this enterprise of the future – where competitiveness and differentiation come from incorporating digital solutions alongside traditional know-how – integration is the watchword. Technology integration and business integration. Integration between mature competencies and emerging skills. Integration between heterogeneous data and systems. Integration of the business/supplier relationship, where delivery model has to keep pace with the new rhythm and imperatives of projects. Integration is the magic key, opening up the digital enterprise. Users – now the driving force behind most requests – are not concerned about the usual silos: what matters to them is the ability to bring together all the ingredients, to implement applications that will visibly improve their performance; quickly, effectively and at the best possible cost.
Data, the cloud, security: three key areas
This heightened need for integration is expressed particularly in the three fundamental aspects that are reshaping application development: business data management, the cloud and security. As we have already seen, data is the number one asset that traditional businesses have over their new competitors. Data is the vital fuel for new business applications and the ability to gather, store and manage usable data of various types, from many different sources, will increasingly be vitally important. As for the cloud, it’s already gearing up to be the Internet of the future. Flexible and ubiquitous, it will be the main vehicle for distributing applications. And because it will allow applications, resources and ways of using them to be combined, it will enable highly innovative, composite services to be developed. Finally, from now on, security will be an unavoidable prerequisite for every application. So it can no longer be seen as a separate issue, but must be integrated from the very start into the solution architecture, and adapted both to the actual risks and to the constraints of use.
In all these three areas – and more widely given the new importance of the question of integration – Bull’s greatest strength is that is has all the key components, the core business elements, within itself. Bull is itself an ‘integrated integrator’, capable of putting together its own multi-disciplinary teams, mobilizing its own technology and sector experts, and leveraging its own network of industrial-scale services centers to their full capacity and strength. Well aware of the challenges that await businesses today, Bull is also capable of delivering the only truly effective answer: an integrated, comprehensive and global response to everything from business challenges to security issues, from hardware performance to application interoperability, from data management to operational monitoring, from up-front consulting to application maintenance…
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