Atos Origin, Global InfoSwift Partnership To Deliver Opportunities To Nigeria

25th Feb 2008

The partnership between Atos Origin, a leading international information technology services provider and Global InfoSwift Technologies, Nigeria's leading information technology company, is set to be delivering gains and more opportunities to Nigeria especially in the information technology sector of its economy.

As part of this development, the partnership between the two companies is already in the process of assisting the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to rank among the top 20 central banks in the world and by implication extends that as well to all the banks in Nigeria.

Mr. Alan Mitchel, Atos Origin managing director, South Africa, who visited Nigeria recently to assess the level work at CBN, said the initiative is a form of partnership as Atos Origin is engaged in direct transfer of knowledge to the staff of CBN. "It is a joint strategy as some of their staff are part of the information technology which in turn can transfer the knowledge as several of their staff are already undergoing training both locally and internationally," he said.

Mitchel noted the fact that the post consolidation of the banking sector in Nigeria has seen the local banks acquiring operating licences all over Africa and in Europe. "The implication of this move has forced particularly those that have indicated interest in the United Kingdom to operate under the Financial System Strategy (FSS) of the UK, so to this extent the CBN is set to show the Nigerian might as the most populous black nation," he said.

Essentially, the contract that Atos Origin and Global InfoSwift signed with the Central Bank of Nigeria is to develop strategy around business continuity, knowledge management and enterprise application integration vis-à-vis service oriented architecture.

Speaking on the importance of business continuity and disaster recovery management in today's businesses, Mitchel noted the September 11 as one sad example. "In fact, when we are given businesses one of the major reasons shareholders pay us as management is to ensure that not only that we develop businesses but we also protect it from risks of it been destroyed in a violent manner," he said. "So business continuity is the technique of the set of practice and processes that ensure business continue to grow and go about fulfilling its mission without any catastrophic stoppage and to ensure quick and prompt recovery at the best level of business in case something happens."

Mitchel said part of the strategy it has to deliver effective solutions to the Nigerian companies is to operate locally while it looks at everything from a global landscape perspective. "In this regard, we are building capacity very aggressively adopting Atos Origin best practices and methodology to ensure that critical support is available to customers in the country and everywhere we operate when it matters most," he said. "This is because an investment is useless if you do not have local support. An investment is not worth it if you cannot resolve issues that come up day to day. In this regard we are building capacity; a lot of investment is going through.
It will interest you to know that, the kind of things we are doing here are actually best practices in the leading economies of the world, so by implication from time to time we go out there to get this things done then embedded in critical projects out there that gives the kind of experience needed. The customer support is actually one of the finest services which is a cutting edge initiative that we have put in place."

Mitchel said Atos Origin also engaged in technology transfer basically to avoid capital flight "because we need to retain some of the revenue in the country and grow the economy."

He said his company has acquired necessary international and best practices experience to be able to deliver the best solution to CBN. "I think when you are running an information technology company, you would want to see a recurrent revenue been a key element of your reverse activities and we are one of the largest outsourcers that goes with banks and then the various level of government in the United Kingdom," he said. "But our flagship is clearly the Olympics. We have been involved with the Olympic movement since 1992 and we have signed with the international Olympics Committee towards London 2012," he said.
According to Michel, it is "a project where we replace idea after the last Olympics in the United States of America and we have been the bidding operators of the Olympics Committee since then, and you know what is so critical about the Olympics is that, even for Beijing this year and for London in 2012, we already know when this projects will start and we have no second chance. We would not give excuses to delay even for a week that is not possible as we have always delivered on time since 1992."

Well, you know if you would dance you would choose the best dancing partner and he disclosed that Atos Origin and Global InfoSwift came together because, the skills and the energy, the confidence of each of the partners were complimentary and they were leading the way to the best way to the penetration into the economy.

For the moment, he said the two companies have been working together in the banking sector and have developed together a value proposition that enable a typical bank in an emerging economy to align the processes of infrastructure and Information Technology to the international standard set by IFA set by the Americans and generally accepted for the banks.

Specifically, Mitchel said the methodology which the company has adopted enables the banks in Ghana, Uganda and Nigeria to those international standards where they have nothing to worry about terms of compliance and governance as this was jointly developed with Global InfoSwift.

Back to Top
Post Your Feedback