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Bull, SAS strengthen partnership in business intelligence for ERP environments

SAS. the global leader in business intelligence (BI), and Bull are strengthening their partnership with a joint initiative destined for the implementation of advanced BI solutions around ERP (enterprise resource planning) in Europe.

Building on the two companies' respective expertise in complex infrastructures and BI solutions, Bull and SAS will enable organisations to improve their business performance and strategic management using data collected from an ERP system.

A number of major customers have already decided to implement SAS 9 with direct access to an ERP system like SAP, with the aim of controlling their businesses more effectively and adding a layer of intelligence on top of ERP data. This implementation is seen as a particularly effective approach when processing large volumes of data.

Most recently, Bull and SAS have worked together to develop a benchmark for Electricit'e de France (EDF), which has enabled this very large company to optimise response times of its global infrastructure by a factor of 10 and to validate its solution, initially used for some 170 000 business customers and eventually by 3 million customers.

"The quality and performance of SAS solutions running on Bull servers enable very large volumes of data to be processed, enabling us to optimise our marketing programs and control our activities in the business marketplace more effectively," underlined Philippe Futtersack, Project Manager in the CRM Analysis Department of EDF's Commercial Division.

In the area of BI and ERP systems, Bull capitalises on the expertise of its consultants in Europe; it has also established SAS and SAP centres of excellence which are charged with defining and specifying architectures. These centres are also involved in the implementation and optimisation of applications running on Bull NovaScale, Escala and Express5800 servers. Bull experts work in close collaboration with the support and R&D teams at SAS and SAP.

"We are delighted with the evolution of our partnership with SAS," said Florence Bergeret, Director, Global Strategic Partnerships at Bull. "To define their architectures or to optimise their solutions, our customers can rely on our SAS and SAP competence centres that provide a unique interface for the deployment of fully integrated and optimised solutions."

Tonny Dierckx, Director, Intelligence Architecture for Europe, Middle East and Africa at SAS, added: "Building on SAS 9.1 and its 'Powered by SAP NetWeaver' certified integration, the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform in combination with Bull's robust servers provides compelling reasons for selecting SAS as BI vendor of choice for SAP users."

According to a recent industry analyst report, SAS provides the most complete business intelligence platform available in the market.

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Bull

As one of the leading European IT companies, Bull delivers open, flexible and secure information systems. The group helps public- and private-sector customers transform their information systems, applying its know-how and expertise in three main areas:

* Capitalising on its extensive mainframe experience, Bull designs and produces robust, innovative and open servers, based on industry-standard technologies.
* Building on its alliances with leading ISVs and long-standing involvement with open source, Bull develops and implements flexible and interoperable application infrastructures which give business processes the freedom to evolve.
* Bringing together recognised expertise in end-to-end IT security, Bull secures data and exchanges that are so critical in preserving customers' business integrity.

Bull has a particularly strong presence in the public, healthcare, finance, telecommunications, manufacturing and defence sectors. Its distribution network and business partners cover more than 100 countries worldwide. For more information, visit www.bull.com.

SAS

SAS is the leader in business intelligence software and services. Customers at 40 000 sites, including 96 of the top 100 Fortune Global 500 companies, use SAS software to manage and gain insights from vast amounts of data, resulting in faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products. Only SAS offers leading data integration, intelligence storage, advanced analytics and traditional business intelligence applications within a comprehensive enterprise intelligence platform. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know. www.sas.com

Editorial contacts

Charlene Carroll
Cameo Corporate Communications
(011) 315 1448
charlene@cameogroup.co.za
Michelle Chettoa
SAS Institute
(011) 713 3400
michelle.chettoa@zaf.sas.com