The digital services company is creating a fifth strategic business area dedicated to turnkey cloud component integration and "Cloud-Native" application development. It is also offering new public and hybrid cloud hosting and consulting services. This new step enables it to offer customers increased agility for their digital transformation and to accelerate the design of new high value-added digital solutions.
Hardis Group, a consultancy firm, digital services company and independent software vendor, announces the creation of a fifth strategic business area (SBA). This SBA, called Cloud Platform, includes application integration and business software design offerings using cloud components and artificial intelligence technologies offered by Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Google and Facebook. At the same time, security consulting and virtual network and DevOps expertise have been added to the Cloud Operations SBA's private, public and hybrid cloud hosting services. Karim Ogbi is in charge of the Cloud Platform while Stéphane Cotet has been appointed Cloud Operations manager. This reorganization is a new step in Hardis Group's strategy, aiming to use cloud services to help its customers with the agile transformation of all layers of their information system: front- and back-office business applications and the infrastructures hosting them.
Creation of the Cloud Platform strategic business area
Cloud Platform has been added to the four existing strategic business areas of Business Consulting, Business Applications (application development), Cloud Operations (cloud hosting) and Reflex Solutions (logistics operations software). The new SBA will include innovative business application design and integration offerings combining components, cloud services and artificial intelligence technologies (predictive or cognitive) offered by Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Workplace by Facebook or IBM Watson. In particular, it will concern customer information systems (CRM, customer engagement, predictive marketing, etc.), internal collaboration tools (corporate social networks including chatbots) and IoT data exchanges.
In addition to integration services, Cloud Platform will also be in charge of developing pre-packaged software solutions from components or services available on these cloud platforms which are tailored to the needs of companies in Hardis Group's target sectors, particularly finance, insurance, energy, retail and logistics.
Karim Ogbi has been appointed manager of this new activity, overseeing 65 employees. Previously in charge of Cloud Operations, he now reports to Marc Bourgeat, who also manages Business Applications.
"This new entity will leverage the talents of Synefo and Bluetis, which joined us in 2017, and centers of excellence in Lille and the Rhône-Alpes Region. We have an ambitious target of sales of nearly 7 million euros in 2018 and are planning to hire 25 new employees this year for this SBA", says Nicolas Odet, CEO of Hardis Group.
Cloud Operations SBA: new service offerings
The Cloud Solutions SBA, which has 110 employees, will become Cloud Operations, managed by Stéphane Cotet, who was previously Business Applications Rhône-Alpes regional manager. Reporting directly to Nicolas Odet, his main responsibilities are to develop new public and hybrid cloud offerings based on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform as well as new services, particularly information system hybridization and transformation consulting (architecture, security, DevOps, etc.). Continuing with projects undertaken in 2017, he is also charged with improving the operational efficiency of the activity by automating operating processes and implementing predictive tools.
"This activity is growing significantly. Given its level of criticality for our customers, we are continuing with actions to significantly industrialize our infrastructure operations and anticipate issues as effectively as possible. We are planning to hire 15 new employees in 2018 for this SBA", explains Nicolas Odet.