Bull acquires FastConnect and speeds up its development in Cloud and Big Data

Regulatory News:

Bull (Paris:BULL) today announces that it has finalized the acquisition of FastConnect, a leading French company in distributed application architectures. The acquisition reaffirms Bull’s ambition to speed up its development in Cloud and Big Data.

FastConnect will bring to Bull its unique expertise in transforming information systems for service-oriented architectures (SOAs), Cloud and Big Data. A number of major global companies, most notably in the finance sector, have already put their trust in FastConnect to help them migrate their critical applications towards Cloud architectures. FastConnect also designs algorithms and architectures for its customers, to address the new requirements created by the advent of Big Data and real-time analytics.

FastConnect will become part of Bull’s Business Integration Solutions Business Line and will be the focal point for the creation of a center of expertise for Cloud applications and Big Data projects, serving Bull’s whole customer base. Founded in 2004, FastConnect has recorded an annual growth rate of 20% in its business, and employs 120 people.

"Our customers are looking to seize all the opportunities that Cloud computing offers, especially when it comes to developing their application portfolios to take advantage of the cost, flexibility and scalability advantages on offer,” commented Thierry Siouffi, Executive Vice-President of Bull’s Business Integration Solutions Business Line. "The acquisition of FastConnect will mean we are one of the few players able to offer a fully integrated Cloud offering, from infrastructures to applications.”

"The coming together of our two companies is based on a shared passion for innovation, and a focus on quality and customer service,” added Jérôme Sandrini, CEO of FastConnect. "Bull and FastConnect have highly complementary technological skills, and pooling our expertise should reassure our customers that we will support them over the long term, enabling them to take advantage of all the various ways of using Big Data to boost their competitiveness and create new services.”

About Bull

Bull is a leader in secure mission-critical digital systems. The Group is dedicated to developing and implementing solutions where computing power and security serve to optimize its customers' information systems, to support their business.

Bull operates in high added-value markets including computer simulation, Cloud computing and 'computing power plants', outsourcing and security.

Currently Bull employs around 9,300 people across more than 50 countries, with nearly 1000 staff totally focused on R&D. In 2012, Bull recorded revenues of €1.3 billion.

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