At this time of year every editor is drowning in predictions for the year ahead. To be honest, I prefer more solid information, says Jeremy Cowan. There is so much enterprise restructuring going on that we’re frantically busy with hard facts in the inter-related worlds of security, billing, car charging, and data management.
Thales CEO goes off ‘merger’ script announcing Gemalto acquisition
The week got off to a bang with Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) and Gemalto (Euronext Amsterdam and Paris: GTO) agreeing to merge.
Patrice Caine, Thales’s chairman and CEO, said: “The acquisition of Gemalto marks a key milestone in the implementation of Thales’s strategy. Together with Gemalto’s management, we have big ambitions based on a shared vision of the digital transformation of our industries and customers. We have a tremendous respect for Gemalto’s technological achievements, and … I welcome warmly Gemalto’s 15,000 employees to our Group. By combining our talents, Thales and Gemalto are creating a global leader in digital security.”
Over the past three years, Thales has significantly increased its focus on digital technologies, investing over €1 billion in connectivity, cybersecurity, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), in particular with the acquisition of Sysgo, Vormetric and Guavus. The integration of Gemalto is expected to accelerate this strategy, reinforcing Thales’s digital offering, across its five vertical markets (aeronautics, space, ground transportation, defence and security). Altogether, this new business unit will represent approximately 20% of Group revenues and rank among the top three players worldwide, with €3.5 billion revenues in the fast growing digital security market.
Combined with Gemalto’s digital security portfolio, Thales will be able to offer an end-to-end solution, to secure the full critical digital decision chains, from data creation in sensors to real-time decision-making. Clients are facing data security challenges in all sectors, including telcos, governments, banks, utilities, and other industries.
Thales will combine its digital businesses into Gemalto, which will continue to operate under its own brand as one of the seven Thales global business units. Philippe Vallée, Gemalto’s erstwhile CEO, will lead the combined digital security business.
The deal is a recommended all-cash offer for all issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Gemalto, for a price of €51.00 per share cum dividend.
Smartly’s mobile app helped by Capgemini to bill
Norwegians accurately for electric car charging
It’s not just enterprises that are repositioning themselves, entire countries are refocusing their business models. Norway is well-known as a global leader in renewable energy, having launched an initiative in 2016 to power all cars with renewable energy by 2025.
As part of this process, the country now wants to provide car owners with easy access to charging stations through housing co-operatives. In a new project, Smartly will encourage Norwegians to use of community chargers and move towards electric car usage by 2025.
With help from Capgemini, and its subsidiary Sogeti, Microsoft is now to build Smartly a cloud connected multi-platform mobile app. Using its expertise in cloud-native technology and its commitment to create measurable digital customer experiences, Smartly said it has moved from a proof-of-concept to a working app in just six weeks. This allows subscribers access to the electric car chargers in the co-operative. (Read the full story on our sister site IoTNowTransport.com).
Intel’s reconfiguration from pure PC play gathers pace
According to investment analysts Seeking Alpha, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich wrote in a recent memo to employees, “The new normal for Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is that we are going to take more risks. If there’s one thing about the future I am 100% sure of, it is the role of data: memory, FPGAs, IoT, AI, autonomous driving…”.
Krzanich went on to say, “We’re just inches away from being a 50/50 company, meaning that half our revenue comes from the PC and half from new growth markets.”
Dammit, we seem to be back to predictions. How did that happen?
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