Akila

When i joined IBM Global Services / Network Services EMEA West at the beginning of 1997, the concept of eBusiness was more an idea circulating inside IBM than concrete financial return of investment for this group. There were plenty of US empty shields offerings inside the group and demand for solid managed data network and collaborative services afflued from multinational like Danone, PSA, etc... willing to deploy worldwide intranet applications. Eric Torres, the new managing director of a 200 persons team asked me to analyse the situation first and to make him recommendations to launch a new eBusiness activity. It was done and we decided to create a new line of services, Domino Line, a Lotus Notes Managed Data Network Services line of services. One year later, our team was leader EMEA wide and worldwide demonstrating that a little team in France with creativity and flexibility can perform in front of much bigger staffs in USA or England with less imagination and reactivity. It was a clear success far beyond worldwide competition (Equant, GlobalOne...) deploying he major corporate intranet projects like Danone Intranet, PSA Intranet, Credit Agricole Intranet... and it was time to extend this approach and model to other categories of service lines like eCommerce applications hosting (like http://www.surfandbuy.com/) or complex web sites hosting requiring special hosting architectures like the web site for Tour de France ( http://www.letour.fr/ for example). This activity was continued by AT&T after its acquisition of IBM Global Services / Network Services worldwide . This activity is still operated today by AT&T : http://www.corp.att.com/emea_fr/services/