ITnation interviewed Christian Adam, the Group Head of IT of Ikano. Ikano is an international, family owned group of companies, with an headquarter in Luxembourg. Ikano was established in 1988 and develops, owns and manages companies in the areas of asset management, finance, insurance, real estate and retail.

Ikano was originally a part of IKEA, the home furnishing company founded by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943. During the 1970´s the Ikano activities involved managing real estate, financial services and insurances for IKEA. In 1988, Ikano became an independent group of companies, owned by the Kamprad family.

Today the Ikano Group owns and develops competitive and profitable niche companies in the areas of finance, real estate, asset management, insurance and retail. Ikano’s strength is distinguished by working together to create long-term solutions based on fair terms that brings value to our customers, partners and to ourselves. The Ikano Group operates in Europe and Asia.

Today, Ikano benefits from an IT globalisation strategy, coordinated by Chris Adam, Group Head of IT of the Ikano Group, from the Luxembourg HQ.

The ITnation Grand Entretien : table of contents

Ikano, when non core activities become heart !

Part 1: the strategy

• Who is Ikano
• The Luxembourg HQ and Group Services
• A Global IT Strategy
• Chris Adam, five years at Ikano as Global IT coordinator

Part 2: the IT organisation

• A Business-Line IT organisation and a Global IT stretegy
• A Group Private Cloud
• The IKEA way
• The current IT Projects and staff

Part 3: the Luxembourg IT asset

• The Luxembourg IT Organisation
• The Corporate services and IT
• The future and the ongoing projects
• The office renovation