Agnès Boudot
Executive Vice President for HPC & Cloud Solutions of Viridien
After more than 90 years of history, 2024 has been an exciting year for CGG. The advanced technology, digital and Earth data company that pushes the boundaries of science for a more prosperous and sustainable future, has announced a change in its identity – renaming itself Viridien to reflect its strategy to transition into a broader technology company.
As Agnès Boudot, Executive Vice President for HPC & Cloud Solutions, explains, this is an exciting time for the company.
“As CGG, we supported the energy industry for more than 90 years. Today as Viridien, we continue this focus while growing new business in markets beyond energy.”
With over three decades of experience in the high-performance computing (HPC) industry, Agnès brings a wealth of expertise to her role. An engineer by training, her career has spanned technology companies in both the United States and France.
She joined the company in 2022, two years before its rebranding this year. Viridien, with roots tracing back over 90 years in the energy industry, is now accelerating its growth as an advanced technology, digital, and Earth data company.
Prior to joining Viridien, Agnès spent a decade at Atos, where she took on leadership roles driving initiatives in HPC, quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Her diverse background encompasses technical engineering work, managing teams, and engaging with customers worldwide on computational science challenges and cutting-edge technologies.
In her role today, Agnès identifies two major challenges. “Firstly, there are always technical challenges in our domain; we have to make the right choices about the new technologies we deploy. The technology landscape is incredibly complex and fast moving, so we work with all the major suppliers to ensure our HPC labs can fully test and evaluate the next generations of compute technology. But I would say our biggest challenge is expanding into new markets from our leading position in the energy industry. I was incredibly impressed by the expertise and unique, highly specialised HPC environment that was created here, over decades of research, to optimise operational performance. Bringing this advantage to new clients and markets will start with demonstrating the value of our expertise and technologies, and showing that fundamentally the solutions that we have developed for our energy clients address the same challenges faced by many other industries.”
She tackles these challenges by assembling a talented team with diverse backgrounds in cloud technology, HPC, and different approaches to scientific computing.
“Attracting talent is one thing,” Agnès explains. “And then, it's about creating a new portfolio, a new offering, defining the go-to-market strategy, selecting the partners to work with and just going out and selling our value proposition.”
Agnès finds the human dimension of her role particularly rewarding. Leading a team, bringing them together, and guiding them towards new challenges is a source of great satisfaction. She relishes the opportunity to develop a new business strategy that aligns with Viridien’s vast knowledge and expertise in areas like geoscience, Earth data, and sensing and monitoring.
While the energy sector remains a stronghold, Viridien also aims to extend its expertise to new verticals like life sciences and digital media. “We have demonstrated to the market in the energy sector that we've been able to adapt to new technologies over the last decades. We are number one in what we do – imaging the Earth’s subsurface – and we believe that we can help accelerate the business for customers in other environments like life science, biotech engineering and digital media.”
As the company embarks on this exciting new chapter, its decades-long legacy of pioneering industrial computing leadership looks set to propel it towards new horizons.
“We know where our strengths lie – we want to be very focused on where we are strong, meaning the high end of complex environments and technologies,” Agnès concludes. “Because optimising outcomes in those environments is where we can bring really big value to customers.”
Read the full story HERE.
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