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Author: Cornelia Wels-Maug
22 November 2006
Yesterday, Austrian systems integrator Systems Integration & Technology Distribution (S&T) announced the opening of five competence centres in Slovenia, Slovakia and Romania and disclosed plans for further industry competence centres in the future.
Comment: After S&T has been busy acquiring a string of companies across Eastern and Central Europe to increase its portfolio of industry expertise, it seems that S&T is now bringing its house in order and establishing common standards across all countries. With staff of around 2,350, it has reached a critical mass that allows it to bundle its expertise across industry topics and countries. Hence, each competence centre has its own strategic focus: IBM Tivoli, Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery, SAP Outsourcing, HP Open View and Customer Concept (a test platform for new technologies which will be assessed as requested by individual clients). Besides its unique orientation, each centre will offer consulting as well as other IT services, internal training, sales support and business development.
There are no initial plans to recruit additional employees for these centres, and it plans to use existing local employees and integrate the centres into the existing national subsidiaries. To start with, each centre will be manned with approximately 20 staff. However, to secure the maximum use of industry-specific knowledge, each centre will co-operate with cross-border teams on given assignments. The choice of location is not random, but reflects the local level of expertise.
The rollout of the centres will start this month and is scheduled to be finished during the first quarter of 2007. S&T won't stop there and already has plans for possibly five more centres in the region, with Serbia and Slovenia ranking high on the list. Usually very acquisitive, this marks a change in S&T's strategy; however, we are sure to see occasional acquisitions in the future.
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