Sharp’s new European IT services division is underway: the vice president of the new company, Colin Blumenthal, and the marketing director of Sharp Italy Carlo Alberto Tenchini tell us about the new structure of the digital technology market.
A few weeks ago the news of the birth of the new European Division for IT services of Sharp Europe was announced. An operation that is part of a wide-ranging strategic perspective, which began as early as 2019 with the acquisition of the British CIT, Sharp’s first Information Technology services company. The goal is to expand and implement the suite of products and services offered and position itself among the leading providers of digital transformation.
The beating heart of the new Division is the European Technology Support Centre (ETSC), a helpdesk for IT services capable of providing massive multilingual support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from monitoring the technological services offered to IT security. We asked the vice president of the newly formed European division, Colin Blumenthal and the marketing director of Sharp Italy, Carlo Alberto Tenchini, for an analysis of the impact of this operation on the European market and, specifically, on the Italian one.
Colin Blumenthal
The European vision of integrated services
Connessioni- What does the opening of the new division mean for Sharp?
CB – Sharp’s business is evolving more and more from hardware production towards complete solutions of services and technologies designed for the workplace of the future. Sharp’s new IT Services Division will be a central part of this important journey.
C – What will you specifically deal with?
CB – The new IT Services division will act as an IT partner for Sharp customers, providing infrastructure and cloud expertise and support. In particular, we have created for them the new European Technology Support Centre (ETSC) which ensures assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
C – How is the European Technology Support Centre organised?
CB – The facility offers helpdesk and remote monitoring service based in Warsaw which provides ongoing support in English and Polish. However, we are working to expand the service by including other languages, in line with future growth and acquisitions needs.
C – What are the company’s future strategies on the IT front?
CB – Sharp wants to become the best technology and IT service partner for customers across Europe. Thanks to the range of MFPs, Dynabooks and audio-visual products, we are now able to offer a complete offer for the workplace.
C – Which services will you focus on most?
CB – First of all, in the timely resolution of problems through our remote management and monitoring system. We will do this by identifying and eliminating even minor problems, before any business interruption. Then there is the service provided by our consultants who, thanks to their specialisation, will represent an added value for our customers, followed to get the best from the technologies adopted.
Carlo Alberto Tenchini
What changes for the Italian market?
C – What will the opening of the new European IT division entail for the Italian market?
CAT – We started in Italy for two years already, this division will allow us to implement our IT services, which we offer both through our direct organisation and thanks to specialised resellers in the area.
C – With respect to IT Services, what is Sharp Italia’s offer specifically?
CAT – Our proposal mainly covers the areas of security, remote management of IT infrastructures, back-up and disaster recovery solutions and application and system support to our customers’ users. However, we are talking about a constantly evolving offer with market trends and needs and it will, therefore, be very flexible.
C – Will this new division change Sharp Italia’s strategic objectives?
CAT – The new division will certainly support us in the further development of this line of IT services. But, above all, it will allow us to standardise the offer at a European level.
C – Does the ETSC also cover technical support for Italian customers? If so, how is it organised and how does it differ from what has been done so far?
CAT – We currently provide services from Italy, with our resources and specialised partners. In the future, this new European centre could be an additional resource to support customers operating on a multinational scale.
