Bull Opens StoreWay Solution Center With EMC

Bull announces the opening of its international Solution Center – the StoreWay Solution Center – dedicated to data protection and virtualization technologies in partnership with EMC, the world’s leading information infrastructure and solutions provider.

The Solution Center based at Bull’s Advanced Competency and Services Center in the technopole of Grenoble, France showcases information infrastructure solutions to address the major data management issues faced by organisations today including the unprecedented growth of enterprise data, optimizing energy efficiency, assuring the operational business continuity of IT systems, and responding to governance, risk and compliance requirements for archiving and retrieving data.

In a recent European Study commissioned by Bull Optimising Storage: Issues, difficulties and winning strategies of European companies, IDC surveyed 100 major European companies with more than 500 employees and highlighted these issues with 64% of respondents responding that dealing with data growth was a major issue, and a huge 89% stating that guaranteeing continuous activity in the event of failure or incident was their top storage priority over the next 2 years.

Benoit Hallez, Director of Bull’s StoreWay Division states: "The StoreWay Solution Center developed in partnership with EMC is a valuable resource allowing our customers to understand and evaluate the very best storage solutions available on the market today, in order to accelerate their deployment within their own organizations to maximize efficiency of the data management infrastructure in line with their new business challenges."

The center provides a live and interactive environment for IT professionals to exchange with Bull’s consultants who have in-depth expertise in all aspects of storage technologies, and who maintain a close relationship with EMC engineering in their Hopkinton headquarters in the US.

Bull and EMC: a 15-year partnership
The StoreWay Solution Center is the most recent phase in a long relationship between Bull and the US storage giant that dates back over 15 years, during which time Bull has widely deployed solutions based on EMC technology throughout the world.

In November 2007, Bull joined EMC’s Velocity Partner Program as a Signature Solution Center Partner and has built on its existing EMC support network, which counts more than 400 support staff located throughout Europe, with the development of a professional services capability through the EMC Authorized Service Network (ASN) program.

Starting from November 2008, the StoreWay Solution Center will run a program of themed storage seminars and workshops, and will host customer benchmarking and proof of concept activities.

Christian Hiller, General Manager of EMC France notes: "We are extremely pleased to further enrich our collaboration with a historic partner. EMC partner Solution Centers are based on the successful model of EMC’s own Solution Centers in Ireland and in the US. Working with Bull extends the reach of our solutions while benefiting from their market knowledge, expertise and integration capacity".

Bull’s Grenoble Center
Michel Bracquemond, Director of the Bull Advanced Competency and Services Center in Grenoble reflects: "Our customers are facing real skills shortages in their own organisations which are inhibiting the implementation of their IT strategies. The StoreWay Solution Center is another asset to provide a complete offering of upstream consultancy, implementation and development services."

The StoreWay Solution Center is a part of major investment by Bull in the Grenoble region. Bull is currently running a campaign with the ambition of recruiting around 100 service consultants by the end of 2008 and as many again in 2009 to work for international as well as local customers.

The Advanced Competency and Services Center today accounts for more than 450 technical experts and service consultants. The site houses a network of competence centers dedicated to areas including Storage, UNIX, Windows, Linux, database, ERP and High Performance Simulation. It also gives access to innovative support services including Bull’s HA 999 center that provides tele-surveillance of IT systems in France and beyond.

The StoreWay Solution Center gives access to experts in architecture, in development and integration. It also draws on Bull Grenoble’s areas of expertise such as High Performance simulation and in infrastructure virtualization.