Computas Increases its Focus on The Danish Market with Google Solutions
The article was originally published in ITwatch on March 12, 2020.
With a focus on Google cloud services, a Norwegian consulting firm aims to capture market shares in Denmark. The company has appointed a country manager, plans to hire consultants, and intends to establish a permanent office centrally located in Copenhagen.
The Norwegian consulting firm Computas is expanding its presence in Denmark. It has only been a year since the company opened its Danish office, and now the consulting firm has also hired a country manager in the form of Norwegian Jon-Gunnar Aasen. He has packed his bags and moved from Norway, where he previously led the IT company’s cloud business focusing on Google solutions. Along with his family, he has settled on Amager and now takes the metro to work every day to drive a similar business in Denmark.
“It was a relatively easy decision,” he explains about leading Computas’ Danish initiative.
“I studied in Copenhagen and know the city. And I believe it has great value for a company to have someone who knows the business and the culture that we want to bring to Denmark. We make a living by selling expertise, and you can’t magically build expertise by hiring people. It takes more, such as onboarding and so on.”
“Google is a challenger in the Danish market.
We find ourselves in Microsoft territory”.
Jon-Gunnar Aasen, Danish Country Manager, Computas
Initially, he plans to hire 10 people to join a staff of 20, with 13 already based in Copenhagen. Additionally, he aims to secure a permanent office, replacing the temporary office space at Nørreport Station. Even in the future, the company intends to remain centrally located. Jon-Gunnar Aasen emphasizes the importance of being centrally located, stating, “If you are centrally located, you are more attractive. It’s a competitive parameter. And even though our consultants are often with clients, we need to create an environment they want to be in.”
There are several reasons why the Danish market is interesting. Aasen notes, “The obvious thing is that Google is a challenger in the Danish market. We find ourselves in Microsoft territory. But we believe it is a large market, whether it’s Microsoft, Amazon, or Google in digital transformation and innovation processes.”
“Based on statistics, my hypothesis is that Denmark is slightly behind the rest of the Nordic countries in cloud adoption. Many companies are in the early stages of forming a cloud strategy and implementing that strategy. We believe that the fact that there is a lack of expertise in the cloud itself creates a market gap,” explains Jon-Gunnar Aasen.
In addition to building expertise in Denmark, he can also draw on Computas’ 300 employees in Norway. Five to six of them commute to Denmark and are involved in the so-called presales processes. Last year, Computas in Denmark realized a loss of seven million DKK, and this year the company aims to break even. Currently, it has 5-6 customers. “We invest a lot in our consultants. In total, it’s probably 100,000 DKK this year that we spend on further education, certifications, conferences, and everything,” says Jon-Gunnar Aasen.
“The cloud war has now shifted to winning the hybrid market”.
Jon-Gunnar Aasen, Danish Country Manager, Computas
Computas is betting on Google’s cloud solutions and aims to assist customers in transitioning from an old on-premise IT landscape to moving more IT infrastructure to the cloud.
“We drive transformation processes to renew IT infrastructure. Coming from application development, we want to build value for customers with new functionality based on cloud tools, whether it’s machine learning applications or fantastic front-end solutions.”
Jon-Gunnar Aasen acknowledges that many customers are not ready to move all their IT to the cloud because they have invested a lot of money or are bound by regulations. Therefore, he has high expectations for hybrid cloud, where some applications are on-premise, while others are in the cloud.
“We want to be a company that creates a predictable and secure journey to the cloud. This doesn’t mean you have to do everything at once. You have to make decisions and take small steps. That’s why we have great faith in Google’s products and Google’s approach to Enterprise innovation, where they want to enable companies to use what they have today while taking advantage of the technology available in the cloud,” he says.
Wants to use machine learning
Specifically, Google has a solution called Anthos, which he has high expectations for. “It is Google’s competitor to Amazon Outpost and Microsoft’s Azure Stack. The cloud war has now shifted to winning the hybrid market. It’s about how to make the most of on-premise solutions.”
In the initial phase, Computas primarily targets large Danish companies because, in Jon-Gunnar Aasen’s view, they have thought more about the cloud than small and medium-sized enterprises. The company is looking at the energy sector, where Ørsted and Energinet are two interesting examples, and the retail sector, where many companies, according to Jon-Gunnar Aasen, need to adopt new technologies to survive.
“If you know what kind of price to set on a product based on data, the likelihood of increasing your revenue is quite high. If you are more accurate in pricing and have a better idea of how much the product is selling, you can use that information to optimize storage, logistics, production, and procurement,” he says, highlighting that machine learning can also be useful for recommending products to customers based on their past purchases. As mentioned, Jon-Gunnar Aasen plans to hire 10 employees this year, with the same plan for next year. At that time, he expects to be settled in the new office.