Year 2000 Services
The Bull Watch 2000 Program

Last content update: November 10, 1999 (see Notice)
Change History for this page

Bull Watch 2000 is a program which complements the Bull Assistance 2000 program in providing support to Bull customers during the early hours and days of the year 2000 : it is scheduled from mid December 1999 to the end of January 2000.

While Bull has taken all innumerable preventive actions to help avoid year 2000 date problems, we must be prepared to support any product/solution-related issues reported by customers during this critical period, so as to help assist their business continuity and to preserve their satisfaction.

The program has been developed to manage 5 key functions (alarms, information gathering, launching action plans, transition progress measurement and control, communication and public relations), all under the Crisis Management Teams responsibility.

These teams, at Bull Corporate level and in each major country where Bull is located, are supported by more than 4000 designated persons worldwide, at all levels of management and belonging to all the key organizations including sales, purchasing, solution/product support and development, and services. In addition, the personnel providing infrastructure support will also be available and working to ensure continuous operation of the Bull Assistance 2000 and Crisis Management teams.

These teams will be fully operational in Bull facilities, 24 hours a day, from December 31^st at noon (French time) to January 6^th at noon .

The following is a short description of the 5 key functions.

Alarms

Bull Assistance 2000 is the backbone of the program to help our customers during this critical period, and the corresponding teams will be the unique source of Year 2000 alarms, in conjunction with the crisis teams in each geographical areas.

3 kinds of alarms are covered :

request for decision on an unexpected call
information requiring special management attention
alert to request crisis team assistance

Information Gathering

As Bull operates on a global basis, we are in a unique position, in conjunction with our vendors and partners, to fix problems occurring in the first time zones which pass midnight and to avoid the same problems cropping up in later time zones.

Bull observers will be reporting to the Bull Crisis Management Team on any possible problems related to products as well as on components operating without problems. In addition, they will be reporting on the available local information relative to the general situation in the country’s infrastructure such as electricity, gas, water, transportation, health, telecommunications,... This type of information will also be gathered from certain of our major partners.

Additional sources of information will be the Bull Assistance Centers who will be tracking customers’ calls and the Bull Internal Continuity teams located throughout the world and who will be extensively using Bull products.

Launching Action Plans

When facing a critical problem, a given crisis team will trigger predefined action plans as appropriate: these are generally related to alarms, "attacks", major product issues, outstanding calls thresholds, viruses,…

These plans anticipate possible negative consequences and define the most appropriate corrective actions.

A plan includes the scenario, the actors and the corresponding internal/external communication action.

Should any situation crop up where no action plan has been predefined, the team responsible will define and implement the most appropriate ad-hoc solution.

All actions are tracked by the crisis management team(s).

Transition Progress Measurement and Control

During the whole transition period, measurements will be taken in order to evaluate the whole program: the number of reported problems, the number of customers/systems reported as "moved successfully",… These measurements will be made at country as well as at major product level.

They will be monitored and displayed in the Bull command centers.

Communication and Public Relations

The information received by the Bull Crisis Management Team is monitored to :

identify trends and specific weak areas, and to direct the required resources to these areas.
broadcast product/solution technical information to the Bull Crisis and Support Teams in the various geographical areas.
broadcast qualified product/solution technical information and provide advice to customers with support contract and who have declared their interest.
update the Bull Y2K Web site (Hot News page) for other customers and the public at large.
inform the media in cases where the information is of interest to them.

Index

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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.

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