Top of the Great Era

Chapter 1792 Does not conform to the process

The next day, Zhou Buqi and his team went to Munich to visit the operation center of Lufthansa's IT infrastructure department and learn more about it.

Kurian also communicated some technical issues with their chief scientist.

What Zhou Buqi focused on was a flat world map on the wall of the headquarters.

There are many marked areas and routes on the map.

After the introduction, the lines marked with black pens are their fiber optic route maps, all in continental Europe; the circles marked with red pens are their offices distributed around the world, there are about twenty or thirty offices, almost all of which are in Europe; The dots marked by the yellow pen are their partners, and there are many of them. The European area is densely packed, and there are almost all of them in Asia, North America, South America, and Oceania.

Lufthansa is the fourth largest aviation giant in the world. The top few are all from the United States, and Lufthansa represents Europe.The outsourcing demand of the aviation industry in the IT field is extremely high, which is basically the same as that of the banking industry. Lufthansa is able to use its super status in the industry to win many orders.

These surveys are part of the normal process.

Zhou Buqi takes a quick look at the flowers.

To be honest, he didn't think that Lufthansa would dare to falsify data in this deal to cheat Ziweixing International.They have already stated that after the sale of the IT infrastructure department, the acquirer will take over Lufthansa's outsourcing orders. This is a long-term cooperative relationship.

In the final analysis, it is still his absolute control over Ziweixing International.

He can play cards outside the rules.

You can do whatever you want, the flexibility is extremely high.

In contrast, listed companies can't do it.

Coincidentally, when researching here, Zhou Buqi encountered two things.

First, I got the latest news that the American IT giant Hewlett-Packard has also participated, and also wants to make a move on Lufthansa's business.

Second, IBM has officially launched the action.

IBM has a deep-rooted relationship in Germany. The German IT giant SAP was founded by three engineers who left IBM. The most important engineer was Mr. Hewlett-Packard.

Zhou Buqi moved very fast.

IBM is not slow either!
Even IBM's speed is faster. They have sent a professional team of 20 people to the operation center of the IT infrastructure department in Munich to officially conduct due diligence on this department!
The IBM team happened to run into Zhou Buqi and his party.

This made Boss Zhou not very happy. He publicly criticized the Germans for their "lack of sincerity", and then went to the airport, preparing to go to Berlin.There is the location of the data center of the IT infrastructure department in Germany, and 1.5 servers are deployed. Go there for further research.

After getting on the plane, Zhou Buqi snorted coldly, "Who said the Germans are old-fashioned? They also have a lot of routines!"

Kurian smiled, "After listening to what Hannah said yesterday, I knew that Mr. Maierhuber's wrist is not bad at all."

Both Ziweixing and IBM want to acquire Lufthansa's IT infrastructure department.

This is normal.

However, the teams from both sides met unexpectedly!
This is very abnormal.

Germans have such a rigorous working style that it is almost impossible for them to make such naive process mistakes.There is only one explanation, they did it on purpose!

Mr. Maierhuber deliberately arranged the two parties together to intensify the conflict and intensify the competition!
Zhou Buqi snorted, "That's fine, at least we can be sure, what Ms. Hannah said last night is correct, Maierhuber is very anxious! He is more anxious than us!"

Kurian nodded, frowning and said: "IBM is a little troublesome! Their speed is too fast, and they even carried out due diligence earlier than us."

"Well, everything that doesn't conform to the process has problems!"

Zhou Buqi asserted.

IBM's reaction was so weird, due diligence was right, but they reacted too quickly.At the very least, we should negotiate with Lufthansa first, discuss the specific intention and cooperation framework, and then IBM's board of directors will approve it.

After this set of procedures is completed, it is due diligence.

Lufthansa's IT infrastructure department has more than 1400 people. It claims to have invested 25 billion US dollars in the past ten years, and its business is distributed all over the world... This is too complicated. If you want to investigate all the situations clearly, you need to send a relatively large professional The team will do.

The cost of this due diligence team is at least several million dollars.

So generally speaking, due diligence will appear at the end of the acquisition case, and when everything is almost negotiated, the due diligence will be conducted.If the investigation results are consistent with the various reports given by the other party, it will be further advanced, and then the acquisition will be completed.

In case the due diligence is completed, but the intentions of the two parties diverge, and the acquisition is terminated, it will cause a lot of waste.

IBM is obviously not playing cards according to common sense.

Zhou Buqi had some guesses, "IBM probably has some internal information just like us, and they are also rushing for time, and want to complete this transaction within two months."

Kurian said in a deep voice: "If this is the case, IBM will definitely relax the restrictions during due diligence, so as to speed up. If IBM can overcome this obstacle, then they are really likely to become a strong force in our acquisition case." opponent."

Zhou Buqi remained silent.

Kurian was a little worried, and said earnestly: "This IT infrastructure department is really important to us. Their data center can solve the trouble caused by the slow construction of our cloud data center in Europe; they The outsourcing business is also a powerful channel for us to connect to European and global B-end customers; the optical fiber business... This is really important and urgent for the cloud computing industry!"

Zhou Buqi agreed with his analysis, and said firmly: "Well, we must complete this acquisition!"

Kurian let out a long sigh of relief.

As long as the big boss is determined.

However, with IBM's participation, once the competition starts... the transaction price may be uncontrollable.

Fortunately, Zhou Buqi's thinking was very clear, "No matter what, this deal must be concluded."

This is strategy!

IBM's acquisition of the IT infrastructure department can only be regarded as a business supplement; Ziweixing International is different. Once the transaction is completed, it will not only expand the business, but also supplement the strategy.

However, Zhou Buqi did not intend to make too many concessions in terms of benefits, and said: "According to the established policy, we will negotiate with Lufthansa, and the price will exceed 10 billion euros, but not too much."

"This..." Kurian glanced at him, "I'm afraid that such a price will not be competitive."

Zhou Buqi said indifferently: "If it's Oracle, or Hewlett-Packard, that's fine. We're really in trouble. IBM...coincidentally, I really have a way to handle IBM!"

"Can you handle IBM?"

Kurian was taken aback for a moment, not quite believing it.

Zhou Buqi waved his hand, "Just go and connect with Lufthansa, and I'll deal with IBM! Judging from the scene that Mai Yahuer made this morning, he obviously wanted to use IBM to create pressure on Ziwei Star." , to increase the transaction price. Ignore him and follow our pace. We have reason to believe that under the same circumstances, Lufthansa will definitely choose Ziweixing instead of IBM.”

"By the way, there is one more thing. There is a shocking news in Silicon Valley recently, which is related to Microsoft."

"Microsoft's press conference?"

"No, Ray Olds, a software architect at Microsoft, has left."

"what happened?"

Zhou Buqi had never heard of this person.

Kurian said seriously: "He may be the best programmer in the world, the successor of Bill Gates."

Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft, but he has never been a strategic and business decision maker, he mainly does some technical work.

Why is Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, still doing such a relatively grassroots job?
Because he felt that no one was qualified for the job, so he had to do it himself.

Later, in 2005, Ray Oz finally agreed to join Microsoft, which made Bill Gates sigh "Microsoft is saved".Then Bill Gates officially retired and devoted more energy to charity, and the part of the technical field he was in charge of was handed over to Ray Oz.

However, Ray Oz and Ballmer had irreconcilable conflicts.

Ray Oz believes that the development of cloud computing should be strengthened, focusing on the deployment of cloud software services, but Ballmer firmly believes that local software still has a very broad market, and he has been reluctant to invest the most resources to promote the development of Microsoft cloud.

Zhou Buqi could see what he meant, "You want to invite him over?"

Kurian said: "He is an authority in the field of collaborative software. Our micronotes and Evernote are actually products that imitate the software Lotus_Notes, which is almost an Internet product. Notes is the software he developed, which was later acquired by IBM at a high price. gone."

"IBM..."

"Yes, IBM. However, Notes is traditional software, and our Evernote is an Internet product. A large part of the market that Weishu and Evernote have taken away belongs to Notes. However, from a purely technical point of view, even after After all these years, Notes remains at the forefront of technology for collaboration products."

Zhou Buqi asked, "Can't we do it?"

Kurian said: "But it must not be as good as Ray Oz, for example... the encryption system in the collaborative process, which is too important to us. You are in China, I am in the United States, our video conference, It must be protected by a foolproof encryption system. The same goes for Weishu, including cloud computing, databases and other fields, all of which are online collaborations.”

This level of executives cannot be accommodated by Ziweiyun, it must be done by Ziweixing International Group.It is the soul of cloud computing to provide the position of chief architect or chief software architect and let him build a better and better Internet collaboration platform for Ziweixing.

Zhou Buqi was very straightforward, "No problem, I will talk to Lu Qi about this matter later. In the future Internet society, collaboration will become more and more important, and there is always nothing wrong with making efforts in this direction."

(End of this chapter)