Top of the big era

In the afternoon, we arrived in Cologne, the fourth largest city in Germany, where Lufthansa is headquartered. However, Lufthansa's IT infrastructure department is in Munich. Let's talk to Lufthansa's group executives first.

Germany is the second most attractive market for IT talents in the world.

However, Germany, which ranks second, is different from the United States, which ranks first.

The U.S. IT industry is very powerful and comprehensive. It is oriented to the global market. The core backbones are Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo and other giants, which will directly cater to individual users.

Germany is different, mainly targeting the European market.

The main thing provided is information services.

For example, a company in the Netherlands wants to develop some artificial intelligence or data mining products, but it really lacks the talent advantages of China and the United States.

The Dutch only had commercial needs but lacked technical capabilities.

At this time, you can find a company in Germany that is engaged in artificial intelligence research to cooperate and purchase outsourcing services from them. Technical support is provided by German IT companies, and Dutch companies only need to carry out some commercial design, improvement and integration.

Germany is the core of the EU, not only because its GDP level is the first in the EU, but also because Germany dominates Europe in the field of science and technology.

Europe... to be precise, IT talents from the European continent often have main outflow directions. One is to Silicon Valley and the other is to Germany.

In the German IT industry, the number of foreign employees exceeds 50%. In particular, some emerging German IT companies adopt a bilingual system of German and English.

Zhou Buqi is not satisfied with many policies, measures and social environment on the European continent. It is indeed very good for ordinary people and has high benefits. But for a capitalist like him, it is too unfriendly, and the various situations are too complicated.

In comparison, Germany is the best.

Another more important point is that China-Germany relations have always been very good. The domestic automobile industry was built with the help of Germans, and even the ideology has the highest belief in Germans.

Zhou Buqi has made an overall plan early on. It may be difficult for Ziweixing International to gain the upper hand in competing with the American Internet giants in the US market.

Ziweixing International's core market should be in Europe and use competition from Europe and the United States to develop.

The core of Europe should be Germany.

Zhou Buqi has been to Germany many times and established the first Ziweiyun cloud data center in continental Europe. The first phase of the project has been running stably for more than half a year, and the effect is relatively good, at least better than Amazon Cloud. .

When we arrived in Cologne, someone came to pick us up.

Half an hour later, at the gate of the Lufthansa headquarters, I saw Mr. Maier Huber, the number two figure in the Lufthansa Group, Chairman of the Board and CEO.

This is already the second time the two have met.

Lufthansa has shown great enthusiasm and trust in being able to cooperate with Ziweixing. This is often the case, business cooperation is mutual. Lufthansa is the earliest foreign aviation group to enter the country. Although the domestic aviation industry is highly nationalized, the level of domestic aviation groups is too poor and they rely heavily on outsourcing.

The aviation solutions and industry solutions provided by Lufthansa are the earliest reliance of the domestic civil aviation industry. Even the aviation food is the overall responsibility and control of Lufthansa.

In view of the friendly cooperative relations between China and Germany over the years, as well as the increasingly sharp competition between Germany and the United States, the cooperation between Ziweixing International and Lufthansa seems to have become a natural thing.

However, Lufthansa’s total investment in the IT infrastructure department exceeds US$2.5 billion. This is a super large project, and the human factor is only of reference value. The core factors that determine success or failure are the project quotation and the future development plan after the spin-off.

After a brief visit, Mr. Maierhuber invited Zhou Buqi to his office and said bluntly: "We have officially decided to spin off and sell the IT infrastructure department. There are many buyers. "

"Oh? Who is there?" Zhou Buqi is quite confident. With the current economic environment in Europe, he doesn't think any IT giant in Europe has the strength to take action.

At least he had communicated with Mr. Hope.

SAP Group, Europe's largest IT giant, will not participate in this case.

Mai Yahuber said: "There are many, about a dozen. However, there are probably... three companies with relatively strong competitiveness, IBM, Oracle, and France's Atos."

"ah?"

Zhou Buqi's face suddenly became less beautiful.

Now that the US emperor is involved, this matter will not be easy to handle. IBM, Oracle... Damn, from China to Europe, these two products are indispensable everywhere!

Kurian sat next to him and asked, "What kind of company is Atos?"

Maya Huber smiled and said: "It is an IT service company in France."

To put it nicely, it is a high-tech information services company, but it actually does outsourcing.

Zhou Buqi smiled and said, "Will you sell the property to a French company?"

"We will make the choice that is in the best interests of Lufthansa, but..." Maier Huber showed an enthusiastic attitude, "However, you are the first team to come to inspect, and we have already felt your sincerity and willingness. ."

Zhou Buqi wouldn't believe such nonsense, so the next step was to read the materials.

It is important to look at the material.

At least we know that the data given by Kurian was not accurate enough. Kurian previously said that the annual revenue of Lufthansa’s IT infrastructure department could reach US$800 million.

Actually no, Lufthansa's entire systems division has an annual revenue of US$800 million. The System Department also includes the IT Infrastructure Department, Aviation Solutions Department and Industry Solutions Department.

Among them, the IT infrastructure department accounts for 40% of revenue and 25% of profits.

That is, annual revenue is US$320 million and profit is US$24 million.

However, in the past 10 years, Lufthansa has invested more than US$2.5 billion in IT infrastructure. Even if this large investment of US$2.5 billion is spread over 30 years, the average investment amount is nearly US$100 million per year.

The operating profit is less than US$30 million!

In other words, the IT Infrastructure Department actually brings annual losses of up to 70 million US dollars to the Lufthansa Group.

This is a serious burden.

More importantly, given the lack of technology, Lufthansa's existing IT infrastructure can no longer meet demand, and they need to increase investment.

The more you invest, the more you lose.

If you can see that this department has hope of "turning losses into profits" in the future, it's actually okay and you can continue to invest. However, the appearance of Zi Weiyun made Hansha despair.

Even Si Ai Pu has taken refuge in Zi Weiyun.

However, Hansa did not give up completely and listened in vain. In order to verify the reliability of Ziweiyun, Lufthansa even actively cooperated with Ziweiyun and used some of Ziweiyun's services, and the results were shocking.

With the help of Ziweiyun, engineers no longer need to spend a lot of time debugging local server and database deployments, and can focus more on business, and the overall work efficiency has increased by an average of 65%.

It's over now, seeing is believing.

Hansa gave up completely.

Mr. Maya Huber said sincerely: "The IT infrastructure sector mainly includes the Internet, including data centers and optical cable businesses. This sector requires a large amount of high-density investment, but now the European environment has changed, and the aviation industry has been severely affected. We hope to find large companies that are willing to continue investing in this direction to cooperate.”

Zhou Buqi smiled, "Of course."

Kurian was overjoyed, knowing that the big boss was going to fully support him, and his interest and enthusiasm immediately increased, "Mr. Maya Huber, what are your requests? Can you briefly explain them?"

Mai Yahuber glanced at his assistant and asked him to continue sending the documents. He said in an orderly manner: "There are mainly three aspects. First, of course, there must be a sincere price. We have invested a total of 25 million in this business. One hundred million U.S. dollars."

Zhou Buqi took the materials.

very thick.

The first material is all the investment projects and investment amounts of the IT infrastructure department in the past few years, various charts and data, and then summarized a total investment of 2.5 billion US dollars.

I don’t know how much is true and how much is false.

Maier Huber continued: "The second point is that this department has a total of 1,400 employees, 1,000 of which are in Germany. The European economy has encountered some problems, and we do not want our partners to carry out large-scale layoffs after taking over the business. We must leave employees with a relatively stable job security.”

This is a hard condition.

Lufthansa is a state-owned enterprise, which means that the company has extremely strong labor union power. Without properly handling employees and giving firm commitments, it would be impossible for Lufthansa to complete the spin-off and sale of its IT infrastructure division.

Zhou Buqi said: "Of course, Ziweixing acquired this part of the business for the purpose of inheritance and development, rather than closing down. The proportion of layoffs will be controlled within 5%, and only normal talent structure optimization will be carried out."

Mr. Maierhuber nodded, "Third, Lufthansa needs outsourcing services."

"Um?"

"Lufthansa also needs a lot of Internet services. If this department is sold, we hope to reach a long-term cooperation agreement with the acquirer and continue to have this department undertake Lufthansa's related businesses."

"Of course, it must be like this." Zhou Buqi was very happy. "We will not lay off employees. The employees responsible for Lufthansa's business will continue to be responsible for Lufthansa's business as in the past. They have the richest and most skilled experience, and they can Best for this part of the job.”

Mai Yahuber laughed, "Mr. Zhou, we haven't reached an agreement yet!"

Zhou Buqi waved his hand, "Tomorrow I will go to Munich for on-site investigation. If it is suitable... I believe that both parties can reach full agreement on their intentions!"

Maya Huber reminded with a smile: "You have to face three powerful opponents: IBM, Oracle and Atos."

At this time, Zhou Buqi could not be timid and showed strong confidence, "It doesn't matter, we still have time, I believe you will make the best choice."