Atos’ Global Capability Centers (GCC)

1. 1. The convergence of AI-Driven Transformation and Hyperautomation & Digital Workplace forms a single, powerful trend: the creation of an Intelligent Digital Core powered by autonomous technologies.This trend reflects the industry shift towards making operations not just automated, but autonomous and AI-native. Enterprises are aggressively moving beyond simple Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to fully embed AI into core workflows, fundamentally changing how work is executed. This includes adopting autonomous AI agents—sophisticated systems capable of planning, reasoning, and executing complex, end-to-end tasks without human intervention—all with the primary goal of achieving step-change efficiency and moving GCCs into the “profit center” paradigm.Atos aligns with this by deploying Hyperautomation frameworks combined with its proprietary Polaris AI Platform. Polaris AI serves as the orchestration engine for this transformation, creating the foundation for an AI/Automation native digital workforce. This ensures the continuous drive to optimize costs is achieved through intelligent design, while the integration of next-generation digital workplace solutions ensures that the human workforce is effectively augmented. By offloading routine and complex tasks to AI agents and digital workers, GCCs can repurpose human talent for higher-value activities like innovation, strategic analysis, and client engagement, thereby maximizing both operational efficiency and the overall user experience.
   2. Cloud-Native & Sovereign Infrastructure: The Secure and Compliant Foundation The imperative for modern GCCs is establishing a foundation of Cloud-Native & Sovereign Infrastructure, which is rapidly migrating enterprise workloads to secure, compliant cloud environments.This trend is driven by two critical, often competing, needs: agility and security. To function as agile profit centers, GCCs require the scalability, speed, and cost-efficiency that only cloud-native architectures can provide. This necessitates not just lifting-and-shifting applications, but re-platforming or refactoring them to fully leverage hyperscaler capabilities (like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud). Simultaneously, strict global regulations like GDPR, evolving data localization laws, and sector-specific compliance rules (e.g., in BFSI and Public Sector) make data sovereignty a non-negotiable requirement.

      Atos addresses this by offering specialized sovereign cloud solutions that ensure data, applications, and operations remain compliant within defined geographic and regulatory boundaries. Coupled with managed services for hyperscalers, Atos enables GCCs to execute rapid, secure cloud migration and maintain operational excellence. This foundational capability is essential for regions like Europe, where GDPR and Green IT initiatives are paramount, and for high-compliance centers in North America, guaranteeing that the Digital Core operates on a secure, flexible, and legally compliant infrastructure.

   3. Performance-Based Contracting: The New Normal The transition of GCCs from cost centers to value-driven profit centers is fundamentally enabling the normalization of Performance-Based Contracting across the industry.This trend signifies a pivotal shift in how GCC services are procured and valued. Traditional contracts focused on inputs, such as the number of Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) deployed, or basic Service Level Agreements (SLAs) like uptime. The future, however, is being defined by outcomes. Clients are increasingly demanding that service providers share risk and reward by tying payment directly to measurable business results, such as a percentage improvement in revenue cycle time, a measurable reduction in the cost-per-transaction, or successful time-to-market for a new product feature.

      Atos is driving this normalization by leveraging its Agentic AI tools (like Polaris AI) to provide the granular, real-time measurement and transparency required to support this model. This technological capability allows Atos to enter into intuitive contracting models, making it commercially feasible and fair to both the client and the service provider. As this model matures, it will become the default commercial posture, ensuring that GCCs are not just efficient deliverers of tasks, but financially aligned partners incentivized to pursue continuous innovation and transformation.

   4. Cybersecurity & Resilience: AI-Driven Defense and Cyber Autonomy The relentless escalation of AI-powered cyber threats is driving a critical trend where GCCs must prioritize Cybersecurity & Resilience through advanced, autonomous defense mechanisms.As enterprises consolidate and digitize complex global functions within GCCs, these centers become prime targets. The emergence of sophisticated, AI-generated malware and attacks necessitates a proportional response that moves beyond traditional reactive security measures. GCCs are now expected to operate with predictive threat detection, constantly analyzing vast streams of data to anticipate and neutralize threats before they can impact operations.

      Atos addresses this by operating AI-driven Security Operations Centers (SOCs) across its regions. These SOCs utilize cutting-edge AI and Machine Learning models to integrate predictive threat intelligence, significantly enhancing the speed and accuracy of incident response. The goal is to achieve cyber autonomy, where security systems can largely manage and mitigate threats without human intervention, ensuring the continuous, secure operation of the Digital Core and maintaining the trust necessary for high-compliance sectors like BFSI and Public Sector (particularly relevant in North America and Europe). This capability is fundamental to maintaining the operational resilience required for the performance-based contracting model.

   5. GCC Trend: The Strategic Shift to Monetization The most transformative trend currently reshaping the GCC landscape is the strategic shift from viewing them purely as cost centers to actively developing them as monetization engines.Historically, the primary goal of establishing a GCC was cost arbitrage—delivering services at a lower cost than the home country. While cost efficiency remains crucial, the new imperative is to transform the center into a source of revenue, IP creation, and measurable competitive advantage. This is achieved by leveraging the GCC’s scale and specialized talent to develop and market high-value, digitally-enabled services both internally and externally.

      Atos directly addresses this trend by integrating its proprietary tools and outcome-based models across the entire GCC lifecycle:

      Enforcing Performance-Based Contracting: Atos normalizes this commercial posture, which is foundational to monetization. The shift from FTE-based billing to contracts tied to business outcomes (e.g., reduced time-to-market, improved customer experience scores) forces the GCC to be efficient and innovative. Atos’ Agentic AI tools, such as Polaris AI, provide the real-time, granular measurement and transparency needed to track these complex metrics, making performance contracts commercially viable and aligning Atos’ incentives directly with the client’s profit goals.

      Driving IP and Product Development: Atos facilitates the shift to a product-oriented mindset within GCCs, particularly in regions designated as innovation incubators (like APAC). By using capabilities from the Genesis Strategic Plan, including the Smart Automation Suite and AI-enabled service delivery, the GCC focuses on building reusable digital assets and proprietary technology, rather than just executing routine tasks. This IP creation is a direct source of future monetization and competitive differentiation for the client.

      Monetizing ESG and Efficiency: Atos integrates sustainability into the monetization strategy through Fin/GreenOps. By embedding decarbonization targets and green-certified operations, Atos offers measurable savings and compliance advantages. This transforms environmental responsibility into a financial benefit, allowing the GCC to reduce operational costs and create a competitive differentiator that appeals to strategically aligned clients, positioning the GCC as a profitable and ethically responsible enterprise partner.

   6. Sustainability & ESG Compliance: Monetizing the Green Imperative The final key trend for GCCs is the shift to monetization through Sustainability & ESG Compliance, demonstrating that ethical and environmental responsibility is now a core driver of profitable business growth, not merely a compliance burden. 

      Enterprises worldwide are facing intensifying pressure to meet ambitious Net Zero and green IT targets. This has elevated sustainability from a peripheral concern to a strategic imperative that directly influences client-vendor selection and commercial viability. GCCs must now not only be cost-efficient but also demonstrably carbon-efficient. 

      Atos leverages this trend by actively embedding decarbonization targets and green-certified operations into its delivery model. This allows the GCC to monetize sustainability by offering solutions like Fin/GreenOps, where cost-optimization and environmental performance are managed as a single integrated discipline. By providing transparent, measurable data on reduced energy consumption (via cloud optimization, for example) and operating within green-certified facilities, Atos enables clients to meet their own ESG goals. This differentiated offering transforms the GCC’s sustainability promise into a competitive advantage and a new revenue stream, ultimately reinforcing the vision of the GCC as a profitable, responsible, and future-ready enterprise partner.

The core of Atos’ “Digital Core” pillar and the shift to performance-based contracting is powered by a set of proprietary digital workforce capabilities, delivered primarily through the Genesis Strategic Plan. These technologies are instrumental in transforming GCC operations by creating a fully AI/Automation native digital workforce that complements and augments the human workforce, ensuring outcomes are met with maximum efficiency and lean costs.

Polaris AI ™ : The Agentic AI Orchestration Platform

Polaris AI ™ is the flagship platform for Atos’ Agentic AI capabilities. It is a comprehensive framework that goes beyond simple automation (like RPA) by deploying a system of Autonomous AI Agents capable of orchestrating complex, end-to-end business workflows. These agents possess built-in capabilities to autonomously plan, reason, collaborate, act, and learn.

• Function and Impact: Polaris AI enables a radical increase in productivity and quality assurance within the GCC. For instance, pre-built agents can dramatically reduce effort and lead-time:
  • AI Developer/Quality Assurance Agents: Can autonomously analyze requirements, generate test cases, and execute QA tasks, potentially reducing software development efforts by 40–50% and QA lead time by 50–60%.
  • Contracts Analyst/Financial Reports Analyst: These agents continuously monitor contracts for compliance risks, flag potential breaches, and interpret large financial documents to provide accurate summaries and actionable recommendations, delivering productivity improvements of 30–60% in those functions.
• GCC Relevance: In the GCC context, Polaris AI is the engine for Agentic AI powering cost decision making and ensuring team quality and velocity. It provides the rigorous data and automated governance needed for performance-based contracting by monitoring metrics and compliance risks continuously and autonomously.

Smart Automation Suite and Hyper-automation

Complementing Polaris AI is the Smart Automation Suite, which represents the company’s full-spectrum approach to hyper-automation and service delivery innovation.

• End-to-End Automation: This suite encompasses a range of tools and methodologies designed to industrialize the execution model. It includes advanced Robotic Process Automation (RPA), intelligent process mining, and AI-enabled service delivery systems that connect the entire value chain—from IT Service Management (ITSM) to business process operations.
• Driving Cost Decisions: The suite is key to achieving the goal of shifting GCCs from cost to profit centers. By embedding automation into the Digital Core, it ensures optimized service delivery, higher billability, and increased offshoring efficiency. This results in the necessary structural cost reduction and quality assurance required to offer clients the prove before you buy quick start operations and the confidence in their investment, backed by the Strategic Realisation Office’s built-in operational excellence.

These proprietary tools and platforms are not just technologies; they are the mechanism through which Atos delivers its strategic promise: a reliable, outcome-focused, and highly adaptable digital workforce, ready for the age of Agentic AI.

The Agentic powered location strategy is a crucial element of the Digital Core, allowing Atos to provide clients with a tailored and dynamic footprint that maximizes the benefits of both global scale and local expertise. This model moves beyond static site selection by using Agentic AI to drive and continuously optimize the location decision based on real-time factors, talent needs, and evolving geopolitical risks. 
 
The Foundation: AI-Driven Location Decisions 
The “Agentic powered” element means the location choice is not a one-time, static assessment but an actively managed, data-informed process. The Agentic AI leverages massive data sets to: 
 
Determine Future Skills Ready Strategy: It conducts AI powered workload analysis and talent gap determination across global geographies. This identifies the best-fit locations not just for today’s operational needs, but for the hybrid skills (like AI-fluent engineers or Fin/GreenOps specialists) required for the client’s three-year vision. 
 
Optimize Sovereignty and Resilience: Particularly for clients in regulated sectors (like defense or public services), the Agentic AI helps find locations that meet data sovereignty requirements, balancing security and compliance with cost efficiency. Atos’ investment in sovereign hubs (like the UK’s Digital Agentic Centre) reflects this commitment to offering fully controlled, compliant environments. 
 
The Flexible Operating Models 
The strategy offers three primary operational models, which can be deployed individually or combined as part of a risk-diversifying, Intuitive Flex model: 
 
Global Local: This focuses on establishing smaller, highly specialized GCCs in developed markets (e.g., the UK) closer to the client’s headquarters or customer base. These centers typically focus on high-value, highly complex work like AI research, engineering, and cybersecurity, ensuring cultural proximity and high IP control. 
 
Multicenter Operations: This is the strategy for de-risking and scaling at pace. It involves spreading high-volume workloads across multiple best-fit locations globally (e.g., multiple centers in India, Eastern Europe, or Latin America). This approach ensures seamless scalability and resilience, mitigating risks associated with political instability, single-country salary inflation, or natural disasters, all managed by the Agentic AI’s workload orchestration. 
 
Sole Center Operations (Turnkey Entity Setup): For a client’s first or primary GCC, Atos provides turnkey entity setup (less than 90 days). This model offers the client full control and brand alignment, while Atos manages the operational, HR, and compliance complexities. The location is chosen to be the best overall strategic fit based on cost, talent depth, and maturity of the local ecosystem. 
 
This location strategy ensures that every client GCC is optimally positioned to be a strategic profit center, leveraging the right talent in the right place, supported by a rigorous digital core, and ready to adapt through the intuitive contracting and operating model types offered by Atos. 

The commitment to performance-based contracting is the commercial mechanism that underpins Atos’ strategic vision to transform GCCs from simple cost centers into value-driven profit centers. This approach shifts the contractual focus away from merely billing for the number of people deployed (Full-Time Equivalents or FTEs) and ties payment directly to the achievement of pre-agreed, high-value business outcomes for the client.

Key Performance Outcomes and Metrics

Success is measured against a balanced scorecard that moves beyond traditional Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to include metrics focused on financial, strategic, and innovative impact:

1. Financial Impact and Efficiency: The ultimate goal is Value Realization.
   • Cost Efficiency (Beyond Savings): Instead of just looking at the absolute cost reduction, the focus is on improving the cost per transaction or cost per outcome. The contract rewards the GCC for driving down these unit costs, proving that the Agentic AI powering cost decision making is translating into genuine, measurable efficiency gains.
   • Revenue Influence: Metrics track the GCC’s direct or indirect contribution to the client’s top line, such as improving customer acquisition and retention rates, or reducing time-to-market for new products/features developed by the GCC’s technology teams.
2. Strategic Alignment and Transformation: This area proves the GCC is a strategic partner, not just an execution center.
   • Transformation Portfolio Balance: Success is measured by the proportion of the GCC’s workload dedicated to innovation, transformation, and AI adoption (higher value work) versus routine operations (lower value work).
   • Strategic Realization: The ATOS Strategic Realisation Office measures how well GCC projects align with the client’s global Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), ensuring the GCC is actively co-owning and influencing enterprise-wide goals.
3. Quality, Velocity, and Automation: Metrics validate the effectiveness of the “Digital Core” and “Intuitive Flex” pillars.
   • Process Velocity: Improving cycle times and task completion speed across key business processes, demonstrating the impact of hyper-automation powered by the Smart Automation Suite and Polaris AI.
   • Quality Metrics: Moving beyond simple error rates to measure the First-Time-Right (FTR) rate and the systemic reduction in rework, which directly impacts the client’s internal customer satisfaction.

The Role of Agentic AI in Contracting

The evolution in the past 12 months—embedding intelligent location planning and adopting a performance-based posture—is entirely dependent on the digital tools. Agentic AI acts as the crucial, neutral arbiter:

• It provides the real-time, granular data required to transparently measure the outcomes (e.g., impact on cost per transaction or time-to-market).
• It ensures the performance-based metrics are continuously monitored, allowing for the flexibility of the Intuitive Flex model, where operating models and resources can be adjusted based on the proven, real-time performance data.

Ultimately, performance-based contracting means the GCC is commercially incentivized to use its modern workforce (human + digital) and digital core to deliver a specific, profitable business impact for the client, confirming its role as a strategic profit center.