Interview IT WIZ

3 years ago, Impaq joined the international Gfi Group, which now employs 19,000 IT professionals in 20 countries. This year Impaq has changed its name to Gfi Poland. As the company’s representatives say, it is another step after the merger with an international company emphasizing the synergy of cooperation in many global markets.

Many years ago, the Gfi Group began its expansion in the world by acquiring Impaq, which today, as Gfi East, is responsible for the development of the Group’s business in our European region.

Rebranding and expansion in Central and Eastern Europe

“For us, this year is, on the one hand, a rebranding process and a change of name from Impaq to Gfi Poland, and on the other hand, an obvious development of business in our region of Europe. Thanks to joining the Gfi Group, we are able to implement projects globally. Gfi Group – outside Europe has also service centers in Asia, Africa and North and South America. Since the merger with the Gfi Group, the number of our employees has doubled to almost 900 people” – says Tomasz Mordel, Sales Director at Gfi Poland (formerly Impaq).

“The Gfi Group also thinks about growth through mergers and acquisitions. We are responsible for the implementation of this strategy in the East, which includes Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Austria and the United Kingdom. At the end of 2018, we acquired a company with several hundred members and in Romania – Vauban – currently Vauban Gfi. A very large group of Gfi’s global customers operates in this market, thanks to which – through the acquisition of Vauban Gfi – we are able to offer more tailored and comprehensive IT services.

At the same time, this investment also gives us access to a very attractive market of IT employees. Many IT specialists from Romania already support our project teams today” – he adds.

Gfi Poland is a 100% technology based company.

“We try to look at technology development in every project, even the smallest, to provide customers with a ‘bulletproof’ solution, resistant to hacker attacks and legal and technological changes. And these are accelerating from year to year. That’s why we recommend, unless it is a prototype implementation, to use technologies that are already promising and developed today, and not just those that are visions. In our projects we want to focus on strong integration of our customers’ systems, not only our own but also those of external customers, on even greater data exchange and automatic decision making of business processes based on Artificial Intelligence”

 – says Tomasz Mordel.

Breakthrough technologies for business applications

Among the breakthrough technologies allowing to build “bulletproof” solutions for customers, Tomasz Mordel mentions: Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence; Internet of Things; Big Data; Blockchain and 5G networks. “Artificial Intelligence responds to the needs of companies focused on automation of various processes, looking for self-learning solutions. IoT is of key importance in Predictive Maintenance systems. They allow to anticipate possible problems on the production line, which is very important for companies, where every downtime exposes them to risk and large financial losses. At the moment, as Gfi Poland, we are implementing such a project for a customer from Great Britain. It is based on the Microsoft Azure cloud and is supposed to predict the behavior of aircraft engines. It is probably the largest project in the field of Predictive Maintenance. The solution we’re developing is linked to the safety aspects of aircraft” – he explains.

In future, 5G networks can be used to communicate with systems that, for example, are responsible for device configuration. In the case of this type of projects, it’s about importing various types of updates – even when the device is currently running! Today it is done during hardware downtime, most often by means of encrypted portable drives. “We want it to be possible to do it remotely, right from the manufacturer’s center. Thanks to this, it will be possible to make changes in configuration practically in real time” says Tomasz Mordel.

Each of the above mentioned projects is based on the analysis of large data sets. “Big Data solutions implemented by us – in which we specialize in the Gfi Group – allow us to analyze data and make business decisions based on them in real time. We work for one of the telecommunications operators, which processes tens of millions of transactions every day. Without the right tools, it would not be able to do this, nor would it be able to draw appropriate conclusions and detect possible anomalies. We create solutions of this type on the basis of available equipment and open source solutions” – says Tomasz Mordel.

Confidence in the dispersed data register

The last of the technological trends, which – in his opinion – is worth noting are the dispersed registers. Despite some reluctance towards Bitcoin – due to falling cryptocurrency courses – the Blockchain technology behind it has potentially a lot of practical applications. They can help us, for example, in the fight for the so-called social justice, a business based on trust. In the Gfi Poland laboratory, Blockchain Blackbox was created, which serves as a black box for a car. Thanks to it, each event that will be recorded is saved in blocks and confirmed by other cars nearby with the same solution.

This will help to create a network of mutual trust. So if someone accuses us of not using a direction indicator and we are responsible for the accident, it will be easy to check it. “This solution can be used by insurers, leasing companies or road managers. Today we already look at such things in talks with our strategic partners” – says Tomasz Mordel. “We are also implementing a prototype project based on Blockchain for one of the operators. We are part of the development team” – he sums it up.