Engineering & Works

The C2C business unit, which has specialised in IP network infrastructure for 20 years, joined VINCI Energies in July of this year, supplementing the range of Smart Building solutions and services. C2C Sales and Marketing Director Philippe Austruy tells us more about it.

Could you tell us more about the C2C business unit’s business expertise?

C2C is an IP solution integrator with expertise in building cabling and especially fibre-optic infrastructure.

We specialise in ELV networks supporting IP solutions for systems such as video surveillance, access control, intrusion protection, Wifi, and public address.

How is the business unit structured?

We currently have 45 employees and generate annual revenue of €12 million.

We operate throughout France from our head office in Chambly, north of Paris. Our customers are primarily Major Accounts in a variety of sectors, including industry, retail and banking.

We also have extensive operations in the data center segment, which accounts for 35% of our revenue.

What gives you your competitive edge?

We were among the first integrators in France to offer a fully optical technology called POL (Passive Optical LAN) and it continues to give us a substantial competitive advantage.

Could you describe the POL technology?

POL is a technology that provides very substantial bandwidth capacity and prevents network infrastructure saturation. It gives a building or campus very high-speed broadband (69 Tbit/s) via single mode optical fibre. As things now stand, it is impossible to determine the obsolescence of the solution, whereas we do know the limits of copper.

Is innovation at the heart of your strategy?

For several years now we have been driven by strong innovation momentum. We believe that in our business it is vital to constantly challenge ourselves, and we regularly ask ourselves what future technology will take us a further step or two forward. 

Our origins are in conventional wiring infrastructure and we quickly grasped that without a technology vision, we would rapidly fall behind.

As part of this innovation drive, C2C discovered the POL technology more than seven years ago at a trade seminar in Hong Kong.

Today, we are already working on the technologies we will soon be integrating that will be supported by our comprehensive range of IP solutions.

What are your goals with respect to the Smart Building?

Our vision is resolutely focused on the Smart Building. We long ago understood that the challenge lies in the basic infrastructure, where all the technologies were going to converge. The convergence of applications and uses is a strategically important part of Capex and Opex investment optimisation in buildings.

We used to work in silos, with solutions that were individually controlled by software designed to manage only video or only wifi or only access control. Those days are long gone!

We now make a commitment, and provide a solution, to move to Smart Building requirements. All solutions must be interconnectable and interconnected so they can be managed and monitored from a single control system. This is also the goal of the BOS (Building Operating System).

For example, we worked with Groupe Auchan on a supermarket in Ajaccio. They previously had six different networks, and now they have only two: a POL IP network (for intrusion detection, access control, screen display, big data, cash register management, BAS/BMS, Wifi and video surveillance) and a separate system dedicated to fire safety.

Six different networks are much more difficult to manage, configure and monitor, and they cost more.

The POL technology supports convergence of several existing networks, and this brings substantial benefits, including lower costs, shorter installation times, greater bandwidth availability and space optimisation, while at the same time ensuring the best environmental impact equation for the building.

What are your most recent sales successes?

We are working with Groupe ORANGE – primarily on their office buildings (60,000 employees in France). Currently we are rolling out the POL solution at the head office in Issy les Moulineaux, which has 60,000 sq. metres of office space, and at another site in Lyon with two buildings and 35,000 sq. metres of office space.

I could also mention Aéroports de Paris, for which we rolled out the POL technology in all the car parks at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. In that project, we connected the video surveillance system with more than 2,000 CCTV cameras as well as the access control and payment systems.