IBM La Gaude : the e-business city bets on the private exchange

The La Gaude team will increase its interest in the Net-economy. They will adapt for Europe the “private electronic marketplace” developed by Dallas and will start tests.

For more than one year, IBM La Gaude has been positioned as the e-business city. Such a positioning has been strengthened with the setting up a new activity: providing and adapting the private exchange, the new concept of private marketplace that IBM has created.Use Internet as a “continuum”This new concept, which allows large groups to integrate all of their computer applications, has been presented recently to the international press on the La Gaude site, in the same time as the information technology plat-form which makes it work. The presentation has been conducted by Prem Puri, the world manager of distribution solutions with the Riviera team of Jacques Gros, the EMEA Manager of the Telecom solution center. Engineers in La Gaude have worked on the conception of the private electronic marketplace with specialized teams in Dallas (the same team that have developed the computer system for Sydney’s games).What is the objective ? Jacques Gros, who is an active member of the Telecom Valley as well explains. “The traditional and the new economy have to be repositioned. Today, only one single economy uses Internet, a tool which enables groups to lower costs. But now, Internet has to be continuously used within the company. With the private exchange, we want to ensure this continuum. The solution integrates relations with providers, customers, carriers, production.”Full size tests in La GaudeIn overall, companies have various applications for purchasing, production, resources, Jacques Gros says. IBM has a “middleware” offer, with software of the Websphere zone, so that a distribution group can integrate the best applications in terms of e-procurement (Ariba, I2), CRM – Customer Relationship Management – (Siebel), etc. The plat-form we have created gathers various applications and ensures this Internet continuum. We can imagine, according to the demonstration, a distributor which orders 500.000 units of a product. The private marketplace will manage everything, from the order to the delivery or to the search for another provider.Thus La Gaude has set a range of computers in order to make a private marketplace work. Around twenty engineers work on this project. They will adapt the plat-form to the euorpean market and above all, they will make tailor-made tests for large distribution groups. Clients will be allowed to spend around fifteen days on the site to test their products and integrate their own management software. A full size test of the private exchange in the e-business city on the Riviera !