The Facets of Cristal

Interview with Ali Moutaib, vice president of Cristal

Cristal, what is it?

Cristal is an association of EPITA and Epitech, created in 1989 by Franck Leleu, the current president of the Alumni Association, with an aim of bringing the professional skills of students to perfection.

 

More than just offering a professional experience, Cristal allows students to actually apply their knowledge on practical cases. Students give their utmost to achieve the mission – real projects, that actually motivate you to work.

 

Cristal quickly became one of the largest associations in France, generating a turnover of over €500,000 and accounting hundreds of customers in 2010.

 

Why are enterprises interested in Cristal?

Cristal has a vigorous structure associated with a wide range of skills: application development, web development, iPhone / Android, professional training … Many students acquire knowledge outside their curriculum, which significantly expands the circle of possible benefits: benefits in terms of databases (Access, Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server), networks (Firewall, Routing, Installation ), development (C, C + +, JAVA,. NET, Visual Basic, Perl), administration (UNIX, Windows, Apache, Mac OS) or multimedia / Internet (Director, Flash, ASP, PHP, JSP).

 

Moreover, its structure gives the association a real dynamism: the process of launching projects is very short, allowing developers to focus quickly on the job.

 

Finally, it is important to note that Cristal monitors the operations of younger companies and it charges lower prices of about 20 to 30% as proposed by the ITES (Information Technology Enabled Service Companies). The longevity of the association and the highly positive feedback reflects its seriousness.

 

What are the plans this year?

One of the projects this year is the reconciliation with the Alumni network of the school that is of great importance. Cristal is indeed potentially a hub for connecting with the old and the best students of the school.

 

We are also planning a setup for the development of mobile applications, the introduction of a touch screen to display our projects, the redesigning of the website – which will better inform the students of available projects. The idea is to have more and more responsiveness vis-à-vis our clients.

 

The association is really motivated this year, and not without a reason: within less that 2 months we have already signed projects with two major French groups in energy sector, and there are projections of exceeding well beyond the last year sales.

President: Yannick Péraste

Vice President: Ali Moutaib

Treasurer: Quentin Veilhan