The Spanish arm of Cap Gemini Sogeti SA has reorganised itself and will now concentrate on five areas – finance, industry, public administration, production and training. Edumatica SA, owned by Cap Gemini, has been integrated into Cap Gemini Espana and will take care of training activities, including internal training. These and the challenges faced at the Madrid-based subsidiary were outlined by the new managing director of Cap Gemini Espana, Jose Luis Gali, in a recent interview with Tribuna Informatica. Cap Gemini Espana is overhauling the range of services it offers and four strategic areas that it will concentrate on in future have been pinpointed: application management, client-server, package-based applications and consultancy. This change in focus has coincided with the application of Cap Gemini’s internal Genesis programme at the Spanish subsidiary. Gali’s first challenge is to steer the company back to profit. Last year saw turnover of $16.7m and losses of $530,000, which Gali attributed to the considerable investment made by the company in the Genesis project. He is confident, however, that the company will immediately return to profit, and he has particularly high hopes for the success of application management, following the interest currently shown by several large banks. Gali said that Cap Gemini is looking long and hard at client-server architecture, while many of its clients are thinking of running pilot downsizing projects, but he believes this market still has to mature.

Sticking its neck out

The host will continue to exist for many years to come. The client-server model is not going to substitute the host, which will maintain an upfront position wherever there are large installations. Of course, there are indeed a high percentage of users that need client-server architecture. Cap Gemini is not sticking its neck out in any one direction – we provide service according to the prevailing requirements. As for facilities management, the managing director said that Cap Gemini will concentrate on what it is best at, applications and their management. He added that there were too many companies that boasted they had global facilities management to offer, when their experience was, in fact, limited. Finally, on the subject of alliances, Gali said that Cap Gemini wanted to retain its independence of both hardware and software manufacturers, but he did not rule out the possibility of acquiring a company if such a move were to benefit its strategic business interests.