Schneider Electric chooses Barcelona for its international digital 'hub'

Schneider Electric reinforces its commitment to Barcelona by choosing the city to establish the international digital hub that the French multinational needs to deepen its digital transformation and make it globally scalable to clients and business partners.

For the launch of the technology center, Schneider has already hired the first 45 digital professionals, out of a total team of 200 people that it will incorporate in 2022.

Behind this choice is the constant work of 300 digital professionals who work in the digital division in Barcelona and who in the last five years have transformed the subsidiary of the French multinational into a nerve center of innovation in Information Technologies.

"We have a first-class department of digital solutions architects in Barcelona," highlights Josu Ugarte, president of Schneider Electric Iberian Zone. In the internal digital ecosystem that has been consolidated in the Catalan capital, in the central offices located in 22@, "professionals of 30 different nationalities are working" and "we already have the spaces enabled for the incorporation of 200 more people." In Catalonia, with 1,640 of the 4,000 employees it has in Spain, the multinational has factories in Capellades, Molins de Rei and Sant Boi de Llobregat, where it also has the logistics center; and in Barcelona it has an after-sales service.

The multinational has already incorporated 45 of the 200 professionals

"Now it's about ---adds the company's top executive in Spain and Portugal--- coordinating our innovation on a global scale with the work carried out in the 64 countries where Schneider has a digital division so that our developments are implemented throughout the group and subsequently commercialized." In this sense, Josu Ugarte insists that "being a large multinational, everything developed for Schneider can be adapted to smaller companies" and, taking into account that in Spain there are only 187 companies that bill more than 1,000 million euros, "managing and creating IT architectures for SMEs is simpler."

It should be noted, according to Ugarte, that the group "has a strong industrial base that has been able to converge Information Technology with Operations Technology, bringing connectivity to each of our products, extracting data and guaranteeing its continuity, and developing the software that allows exploiting and extracting the maximum value from that data. All this with open and scalable platforms."

First tasks

Hence, the digital hub already has assigned tasks: Barcelona will pilot the company's cloudification, the development of systems for strategic business processes, cybersecurity, and data management, analysis, and integration to become a completely Data-Driven company. This is without neglecting solutions based on Artificial Intelligence, the promotion of eCommerce, or sustainability, among other areas.

"The cloud is very important for our company and should be for other companies because it provides flexibility, agility, scalability..., something that needs to be capitalized on in the new economy," says Ugarte when explaining the project. "Schneider has many subsidiaries and companies that it has incorporated throughout its business trajectory, and we have to homogenize the ERPs, that is, the strategic business processes and business layers, and the easiest way is to take them to the cloud, but this has enormous implications," which will be resolved from Barcelona.

Barcelona will pilot the company's cloudification, the development of systems for strategic business processes, cybersecurity, and data management, analysis, and integration

Linked to the cloud, another priority work focus will be cybersecurity. "The great fear of many companies is to take their information to the cloud because they believe there may be cybersecurity problems. Companies have to understand that not only internal systems must be controlled, but also any additional hardware or peripheral that enters the system, because it is very dangerous."

Regarding data management, the president of Schneider Electric Iberian Zone emphasizes that "extracting value from data is what really makes a company different" and in Spain "the most digital companies, the most modern ones, make all their decisions based on data, but the more traditional ones still don't." Furthermore, those that are aware of its value and try to manage it, "do not have their data well structured." "Data ---adds Ugarte--- has to flow, to move from one platform to another, it has to be contextualized, it has to be in real time in many cases and also when data is created in one area of the company, it needs to serve other departments, that is, there must be digital continuity. This aspect is still very far from companies."

The incubator role

The choice of Barcelona as an international digital hub will also enhance Schneider Electric's role as an incubator for emerging technology companies. The teams in the Catalan capital "will collaborate in auditing possible projects to invest in," explains Ugarte.

Currently, the French multinational has invested 500 million euros in startups, through six capital funds, which have allowed direct resources to be allocated to thirty projects, participation in 200 partnerships, and the incubation of 12 companies.

Of these, two are in Spain: the Barcelona startup Submer which has developed a cooling liquid for data center IT equipment that prevents them from overheating too much. And the Basque firm Enigmedia, specialized in cybersecurity, encryption, and protection of critical infrastructure networks, industry 4.0, and smart buildings.