Aerospatiale SA’s Missiles Division has chosen Cap Gemini Sogeti SA’s subsidiary Cap Sesa-Hoskyns to renovate and support its entire installed base of microcomputers with a four-year contract that will be worth approximately $6m. The facilities management micro contract is part of a continuing programme to modernise and reduce the cost of managing its base of more than 2,300 microcomputers. The heterogeneity of our installed information system, a decentralised organisation and the acceleration of the technology had brought us several years ago to launch a plan of simplification, said Guy Vauzeilles, associate director of investments and information and telecommunications systems, in an article in La Tribune-Defosses. The programme that we had, which had already enabled us to reduce our costs by 10% between 1992 and 1993, was extended in various pilot projects, of which one is the contract we signed with Cap Sesa, Vauzeilles said. Under the contract, Cap Sesa-Hoskyns will take charge of replacing the micro population, at a rate of between 50 and 100 new machines a month. For the first year, it will concentrate exclusively on Aerospatiale’s site at Chatillon, in the suburbs of Paris. Once the machines are in, Cap Sesa-Hoskyns will manage their maintainence, internal reporting and supply of inventory. It will also provide help desk service, comprising up to 2,500 calls a month and guaranteed response and recovery times, for the division’s seven sites in France. Overall, Vauzeilles expects to save money. In terms of the costs of owning, evolving, training and maintenance, a workstation is very expensive, about $6,000 over three years, he said. Cap Sesa announced also a two-year, renewable contract with Credit Lyonnais to manage its international leasing application called Sybail. Under the terms of the contract, Cap Sesa will take charge progressively of supporting all Sybail users in Belgium, Spain, Greece, Indonesia, Morocco, Reunion and Tunisia, as well as the maintenance and evolution of the application itself. The French operational arm of Cap Gemini has also introduced a point-of-sale information system that is designed to integrate all types of point-of-sale systems and to satisfy requirements for consumer information, communication from the point of sale to partners, real-time supply of statistical and merchandising information and connections to office automation and messaging tools.
