Under our Open Energy brand name, we are working on the integration of the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite with the wide range of solutions offered by the ObjectWeb consortium, of which Bull is a founder member and within which we are actively working on their interoperability.

In the area of HPC, we have demonstrated with TERA-10¹ that we have the talents to rival American and Japanese IT makers. Bull has recently won a number of very large contracts you will undoubtedly hear about over the next few weeks. But innovation is not just the prerogative of large organizations, and this is why we have decided to facilitate access to HPC for all manufacturing companies in announcing a simple and particularly competitive solution integrating Microsoft’s HPC software² and some pre-configured applications³ on our NovaScale servers.

This is our vision as ‘Architect of an Open World’: interoperability, flexibility, and freedom of choice have been part of Bull’s strategic vision for its customers for two years. The recent agreement between Microsoft and Novell is another confirmation that we are on the right track; it reinforces our strategy of concentrating on openness and shows that we are ahead of our competitors.

Our priorities in 2006 have been excellence in the execution of our strategy and business efficiency. In these pages you will be able to appreciate the diversity of what we have achieved, with, this month, a particular spotlight on the success of our teams in Eastern Europe.

On behalf of everyone here at Bull, I wish you a very happy festive season.

Didier Lamouche
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

¹ TERA-10: the supercomputer designed by Bull and delivered to the French Atomic Energy Authority (the CEA)
² Windows Computer Cluster Server
³ For example, Fluent’s flow simulation solution