As a prime contractor and operator on large, complex projects, CS relies on its centers of technological excellence in order to meet the high-stakes challenges of its customers:

These are some of the major CS technological skill centers. They are the source of excellence that empowers the company to deliver innovative, turnkey systems and to ensure customers benefit from performance and continuity from systems, both in design and operations.

Anticipate change in the business requirements of our customers, in France and abroad, expand our know-how and abilities based on our operational references, extrapolate our understanding to cover emerging requirements, identify reusable products and communicate the opportunity, and identify strategic partners who can boost our efforts in building the innovative, competitive and reliable systems of the future – these are the stakes in a world of accelerating change and complexity. This is the human and technological foundation on which a unique opportunity stands to design the systems that underpin the most critical missions of our customers.

As a turnkey solutions integrator, CS actively pursues its development of markets for mature products with high value-added, yet easy to integrate into complete solutions. In response to markets in France and abroad, our Research and Development mission is to field the most advanced technologies, and to define the components of future systems.

Research & Development

The R&D activities of CS are adapted to its business model of being an integrator of mission-critical systems, and to its differentiation strategy of fostering technological innovation. R&D spending amounts to around 9 percent of revenues. The aim is multifaceted: maintain our development methodologies at the highest level in the market, acquire technological components in support of our differentiation strategy, and develop reusable product lines in order to accompany our customers in their strategic programs.

CS further contributed to competitive clusters of international stature:

• SYSTEM@TIC in the Paris region. CS is a major industrial partner of the cluster, devoted to complex systems and software. CS manages the IOLS project (Infrastructures et Outils Logiciels pour la Simulation, or infrastructures and software tools for simulation) for development and optimization of simulation software necessary for the analysis, design, and optimization of increasingly complex, innovative products and systems. 

A partner in Ter@tec, the European excellence center for simulation and parallel computing, created by French atomic energy agency cea, and at the heart of the competitiveness cluster, SYSTEM@TIC, CS coordinates a project for highperformance computing design and optimization environments (French: EHPOC), the follow-up to a project for infrastructure and simulation software tools (French: IOLS). In partnership with INRIA, the French institute for research in computer science and control, cS directs the project, CILOE, for the implementation of a distributed parallel-computing system, available to partners in the competitiveness cluster, MINALOGIC.

• Aerospace Valley in the Midi-Pyrenees and Aquitaine regions, operates in the fields of aeronautics, space and embedded systems. CS was a coordinator for the es-pass consortium (verification tool for static analysis of critical embedded software), contributes to the program, MOSART, in order to ease access to digital simulation for all aeronautics players, and is leading the consortium for a project to enable formal verification upstream of embedded systems (French: VERIFME), awarded the aerospace valley label in March 2010.

• Cancer research, biotechnology and health, at the Cancéropôle in the Midi-Pyrenees and Limousine regions, focus on the fight against cancer. CS and IBM are partnering on the Cancéropôle site to set up a shared, cross-structural service platform, dedicated to competitiveness.

• Sea, security, safety and sustainable development, in the Paris-Alps-French Riviera regions, is a field where CS and its subsidiary Diginext are involved directly in homeland security and more particularly in close-in protection systems for persons, goods and installations in a high-value zone for maritime operations. This activity, in the maritime segment, forms part of the overall development strategy of CS in homeland security.

• TES (Transactions Electroniques Sécurisées, or e-secure transactions) in the Normandy region offers an opportunity for CS to contribute to wireless security.