Year 2000 Overview
The Bull Year 2000 Program

Last content update: October 28, 1999 (see Notice)
Overwiew/Index page

 


Introduction

The Groupe Bull Executive Committee is sponsoring the Bull Year 2000 Program around two major themes :

  • Bull, as a major services and IS vendor, must ensure that its customers are able to move safely to Year 2000 by providing them with Year 2000-ready products and supporting them during the transition : this is our Customer Year 2000 Project.
  • Bull, like all major corporations, must ensure that, throughout the world, all its information systems (IS) as well as its non-IT equipment, will make the transition to the Year 2000 without technical problems, this without impacting its business and relationship with its customers and partners: this is our Internal Year 2000 Project.

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The Pont de Normandie (France)

Below is an overview of the main contents and status of these two projects.


The Bull Internal Year 2000 Project

This internal Programme covers the IT and non-IT domains for the whole Group, i.e. all affiliates, factories and facilities in all countries where Bull is present.

The IT domain is split into four sub-domains:

  • Corporate and Local Applications
  • Business Computing Platforms
  • Telecommunications
  • Office Systems

The non-IT domains cover all non-IT services and utilities (badge readers, elevators...).

In each country and major facility, a Year 2000 Project Leader has been assigned a dedicated team. All these IT and non-IT domains and their activities are coordinated at senior corporate level.

  • IT domain

The IT domain in Bull’s case is obviously common to Internal and Customer Year 2000 projects, and both types of project benefit from the same effort and level of investment, especially in term of platform readiness.

  • Corporate and Local Applications
    Bull's internal applications portfolio has been analyzed and decisions have been made for each application; e.g. the applications to be kept after renovation as against applications to be dropped and replaced. This same process is applied to corporate as well as local applications.
  • Business Computing Platforms (Hardware and Software)
    In all Bull affiliates, all systems have either been renovated or are in the process of being replaced.

  • Telecommunications (voice, data services and EDI)
    All equipment has been checked and outstanding issues are being remedied with our external suppliers.

  • Office Systems
    These are screened by each unit in each department, using readiness tests that can be accessed centrally. A separate audit has been conducted of all desktops and networks and will continue as an on-going activity.

The Groupe Bull project team in charge of this IT domain has completed all actions as planned by 2Q99.

In order to sustain a normal operating environment, we performed group-wide testing in June and September 1999.

  • All new software and infrastructure components have been successfully tested both end-to-end and interactively with all components.
  • These tests included:

    • - the global supply chain (ordering, manufacturing, delivery and billing);
    - the Customer support program (See, "The Bull Customer Year 2000 Project" section);
    - the introduction of new products;
    - the internal Year-end rollover scenario;
    - and, more globally, all the Bull-critical processes.

  • Non-IT domains

These have all been audited and documented. A complete status plan of the resulting actions, country by country, is continually updated and reviewed monthly.


The Bull Customer Year 2000 Project

This project has been launched with a dedicated team and a clear set of objectives.

A world-wide organization has been put in place with the participation of all Bull product and service divisions as well as the sales networks.

The program and the process have been defined to meet a single objective :

To make sure that all our customers will be ready for a safe transition to Year 2000.

This program is tracked monthly with all our affiliates world-wide and reported on monthly to the Year 2000 Steering Committee. This committee is composed of members of the Groupe Bull Executive Committee. Major issues are reported on weekly to the Senior Executive Vice President of Operations, and a Program checkpoint is reviewed at each Groupe Executive Committee meeting.

Six major actions have been defined and implemented in the Customer Year 2000 Project :

  • keep all our customers informed on the Year 2000 issue and its potential risks, by building a Web site, sending letters and organizing seminars.
  • ensure that our current products and solutions are Year 2000-ready.
  • ensure through our suppliers program that the external products we integrate are Year 2000-ready.
  • respond to queries from customers.
  • offer a complete set of tools and services to assist customers in their Year 2000 projects.
  • develop a specialized assistance service to support our customers during the transition period.

Awareness Letters

All our affiliates have sent awareness letters to all customers, starting in 1996.

Bull Year 2000 Product and Solution Compliancy

All Bull product divisions have tested their products to ensure that they are Year 2000-ready.

Bull has classified a product as being "Year 2000-ready" when it is capable of correctly identifying, manipulating, and performing calculations on dates later than December 31, 1999 and which has been tested as such, provided it is used in accordance with its associated documentation and provided also that, when linked up to other components, it factors in the calendar date in the same conditions as and in a manner compatible with such Products.

The term "Year 2000-ready" is never used as a trademark or trade name of any product or service, but as a literal expression to define a technical status of our products.

Products are "Not Year 2000-ready" whenever Bull is unable to make any statement concerning their capacity for correctly identifying, manipulating, and performing calculations on dates later than December 31, 1999. In certain customer-specific cases, after a preliminary study and diagnosis, Bull may provide support for such products.

Since July 1997, the Bull Year 2000 Compliance Catalog has been available on Internet at: http://www.bull.com/year2000. It currently references more than 30,000 documented products.

Third Party Suppliers

Purchasing organizations at Group level and country level have requested compliance statements from all vendors of products included in the Bull offer. The Group Purchasing department is recording all queries and answers in its database. Where appropriate, Bull is even auditing it's own suppliers.

Response to Customer Questions

Each country world-wide, has put in place dedicated Year 2000 processes and organizations to ensure that each request receives as timely and accurate an answer as possible.

Year 2000 Services Offer

Bull has developed, within its own Services and R&D organizations as well as through strategic partnerships, a comprehensive portfolio of methodologies, tools and resources to help its customers in the execution of their own Year 2000 readiness plans.

Customer Assistance during the Transition

1999 is the year of testing and contingency plans for Bull, our customers and our partners.

Starting in 2Q99, Bull is implementing a full program: "Bull Assistance 2000" to help our customers during the critical period.

This program includes:

  • Bull Info 2000, a hot line available in each country to provide Bull and non-Bull users with Year 2000 information upon request.
  • Bull Assistance Centers, also available in each country, to answer any question or to fix any Year 2000-related problem reported by a customer with maintenance contract.

The Bull Assistance Centers are backed by a central support team as well as extensive help desk resources.

All Bull products and services divisions are putting in place processes and resources such as our Rapid Response Teams to speed up answers and fixes for customers. A dedicated alert and escalation process to accelerate Year 2000-related decisions has been implemented in order to ensure the immediate availability of resources wherever necessary.

This program will impact more than 1000 Bull people worldwide. Holiday and continuity plans during this critical period have been prepared and agreed with the employees concerned.

 

This document is published for your information and assistance only. Bull makes no statement on the results of your Year 2000 project and shall not be responsible for its implementation except as may be set forth under the conditions of a written diagnosis and/or development contract. Bull disclaims  all such implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose and makes no express warranties except as may be stated in its written agreement with and for its customers. In no event is Bull liable to anyone for any indirect special or consequential damages with respect to this document.

 

Index

With frames: [ Overview ]...and use the navigation bars.

Without frames: [ Overview | Chairman's message | Year 2000 Program | Recommandations | Commitments | Assistance 2000 | Watch 2000 | Change history |  Other useful sites ]
Compliance catalogs: [AccessMaster | AIX | BOS 2 | Compuprint | CTOS | Datawarehousing | EDIWorks and Cross-File Transfer | EFT Terminals | Encryption Utilities | GCOS 4 | GCOS 6 HVS | GCOS 6 HVX | GCOS 7 | GCOS 8 | Integris Utilities | Mistral | Networking | Nipson | OESS | OpenMaster | AS/U - OpenTeam | Migration Products | PCs | Peripherals | Point of sale | Powercluster | Sagister | Smart Cards | Solar and SPS5 | SPART/SPIX | Telco - PowerSS7 | Teller machines  | 2Ai Solutions ]

Notice
Bull is making every effort to provide accurate and explicit information on the Year 2000 readiness of its products. The information on this page reflects the current results of our compliance tests and may be updated as testing continues. Please see the Bull Year 2000 Compliance Overview for an explanation of the terms used and our commitments.

Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Statements
Information contained on Bull past and present Year 2000 Internet Website pages regarding products and services offered by Bull are "Year 2000 Readiness Disclosures" as defined by the Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act of 1998, (The United States of America's Public Law 105-271, 112 Stat. 2386) enacted on October 19, 1998. Bull Year 2000 Internet website pages have been and will continue to be our primary mechanism for communicating year 2000 information.

Trademarks
Any trademarks referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners.