The death of Moore’s law

While in high school, he got his feet wet with IT. Assembly language is a language

that speaks to him very quickly. "Back then, there weren't that many computers,

especially the ‘personal’ kind, with 3KB of memory and a storage capacity in MB…."

This is enough to pique the interest of the young Jérôme who will orient his

professional career towards the universe of 0s and 1s. Since then, things have

evolved a lot.  According to him, beyond saving space and power, the turning point

in evolution is with the  appearance of the mouse and Windows. "The Mac arrived,

then Microsoft on PC moved into the landscape," continues Jérôme. "Before, to

a command, all we had was a black screen with 80 characters and 25 lines" he

recalls. For him, in terms of performance, processor speed has stabilized since the

early 2000s. Moore's Law is obsolete.

Holey beginnings

Jérôme remembers his heroic beginnings: "I started with punch cards in a drawer,

then magnetic tapes arrived. And the printers gave us a flower

with the daisies." Then news groups began to flourish in the early 90s

and Jérôme is not the last one to be active on the ancestors of blogs.

"Techno fans rubbed shoulders with other discussion groups that were not really

recommendable...  Everyone had access to the emerging web. Dark before its time,"

notes Jérôme.

Looking back on his professional beginnings, one of the four founders of FiveForty°

reveals the identity of its first employer: the DGSE [Directorate-General for Exterior

Security, the French ‘CIA’]. He is bound by NDAs for ten years about his activities.

Jérôme, assigned to  the military branch explains: "We were brought the tapes of

encrypted transmissions from  the Eastern bloc. We created the algorithms to

decode encryption keys to monitor troop  movements." The routine, for five years.

But one day, surprise. His department mistakenly receives a tape which is not

intended for it. “The movements were less military, much more intimate. A factory

manager of the GDR revealing the list of his mistresses and his particular tastes...",

Jérôme smiles. Then, wishing to explore other horizons, he creates his own IT

services company. The Gulf War breaks out. Extreme international tension, US

intervention, oil issues... The brutal investment stoppage is too much for the young

IT services company. Jérôme then  becomes Information Systems head at one of his

former clients, Gedimat.

Feat of arms

He wrote by himself a management software package which he would continue to

develop  before switching over after ten years to an AX Dynamics ERP.

Some fifteen years later, Jérôme tries the adventure that is consulting and found his

first client at La Martinière éditions. His mission: to develop the ERP already in place.

Customers follow one another. Among them: Geodis, with a feat of arms.

Technical architect and developer, he collaborates with the IT department on an AX

project spearheaded by the finance division. The only expert on the IT operations

team,  he has to deal with a big data processing problem that several companies

were brought in to solve, to no avail. According to Jerôme, processing, which

required thirty-six  hours, could be reduced considerably. 

The finance division, sold, gives it the go ahead.  Jérôme uses all his waking hours,

including vacation time, to rewrite the data processing.

"In the end, processing was completing in less than a minute", summarizes

Jerôme. On a parallel track, Jérôme creates Flexmind with other partners.

This success allows him to place up to twenty people at Geodis. Flexmind’s take-off

is assured. After five years at Flexmind, differences of opinion in terms of strategy

lead Jérôme to resell his shares. He then joins FiveForty°.

A very hot cold snap

Another adventure begins, the the new Microsoft Solutions consulting is quickly

gaining height. Ascending, Jérôme knows a couple secrets about it, since he’s

practiced gliding for a long time. "There are two ways to gain altitude in a glider",

he explains. "You turn inside columns of rising hot air or you benefit from a rebound

effect of the wind on the slopes of the hills." Engine-less flying, however, is not always

the serenity-filled world one imagines. "As we were on the way home, freezing rain

surprised us. The airfield was on the other side of the mountain and we were losing

altitude due to the weight of the ice accumulating on the wings... Then, that was

a bit borderline” recalls the FiveForty° partner.

Later on, Jérôme develops a passion for diving, motorcycling and cooking where he

has also specialized on the long-period fermentation of cooking dough. But the

passion for the job is strongest for the systems architect. Up to date on the

latest developments, mindful of optimization of technologies and at the forefront of

innovation, Jérôme today takes part in Open Source projects. His current topic:

distributed applications capable of being run on several machines at the same time.

"It is crucial to always be on the cutting edge to guide our clients properly when

these  subjects will emerge." °