Bull, leader in mission-critical digital systems, is today launching Le Cloud by Bull: the first structured approach to achieving a smooth transition to secure, made-to-measure enterprise cloud computing, and ensuring that the cloud is a positive driver for business performance.
“The journey to the cloud is just starting,” explains Philippe Miltin, Executive Vice-President, Computing Solutions at Bull. “For IT Departments it represents a radical change, but one that will be gradual and will involve them tackling not just technological and security challenges, but also questions of IT governance. With Le Cloud by Bull, we are proposing a structured and pragmatic methodology dedicated to addressing these issues. But above and beyond these challenges, the real change for the enterprise will center on business use: how to move from a technological cloud, to a business cloud.”
An approach based on 4 pillars
Bull’s approach confronts the four key challenges that the cloud poses to business – strategy, future proofing, sovereignty and security – enabling organizations to tackle the journey towards the cloud in a pragmatic way:
- The enterprise cloud: Bull has created ‘Advisory Services for Cloud’: a consultancy and change management led methodology to support the transition to the cloud
- The agile cloud : Bull is unveiling an innovative, turnkey cloud computing platform: bullion cloud platform and enhances its server families – novascale, Escala, bullx– as well as its StoreWay storage systems with all the functionalities needed for the cloud
- The secure cloud : Bull delivers an end-to-end response to this critical challenge by launching a comprehensive cloud security offering
- The managed cloud : Bull is launching two offerings aimed at organizations wanting to implement hosted private clouds and offers innovative public cloud solutions for HPC and e-business
1. The enterprise Cloud
To help organizations evaluate the benefits and build a tailored approach which is most appropriate to their own business challenges, Bull has created ‘Advisory Services for Cloud’: a consultancy and change management led methodology to support the transition to the cloud. This offering is based around rigorous, rapid and independent analysis, using the ITIL, COBIT and e-SCM methodology frameworks. In particular, it includes GPS for Cloud (opportunity analysis), Compass for Cloud (analysis of the most appropriate scenarios depending on business need, impact assessments and ROI), design of the cloud services catalogue and the target technical architecture. Based on these recommendations, organizations can transition to the cloud in a pragmatic way, with an optimally defined service levels, the cost of units of work, service quality indicators, security policies and tools, service continuity and process automation.
2. The agile cloud
Bull is also unveiling an innovative, turnkey cloud computing platform: bullion cloud platform. A convergent hardware platform for mission-critical cloud implementations in a single rack, bullion cloud platform combines all the power of bullion – the world’s fastest x86 enterprise server – VMware VSphere 5, and partners’ storage and network solutions integrated and certified by Bull. This highly scalable platform is capable of efficiently hosting over 500 applications on just one server or accommodating even the most resource-hungry systems such as massive databases, on a single Virtual Machine. bullion cloud platform can be deployed in three configurations: ‘Discovery’ for application development, ‘Department’ to encourage optimum resource utilization and ‘Enterprise’ to respond to the most demanding performance and security requirements, with advanced access control options, defense-level encryption and data leak protection.
To speed up organizations’ progress towards the private cloud, Bull is enhancing its server families – novascale (in blade format), Escala (offering a high-security cloud for AIX® environments) and bullx (supercomputers) – as well as its StoreWay storage systems bringing the dynamic configuration, automation, provisioning and billing capabilities needed for the cloud.
With its comprehensive server offering, Bull is the first manufacturer to offer an end-to-end methodology to transform infrastructures into private or hybrid clouds, based on best-in-class technologies.
3. The managed cloud
As a major outsourcer, Bull is already a trusted partner when it comes to hosting and managing private clouds and offering innovative public cloud solutions. Complementing its offerings launched in 2010 – Extreme Factory (Europe’s leading scientific computing cloud) and Cloud Maker (the IaaS solution from Agarik, Bull’s subsidiary specializing in critical Web hosting) – Bull is now launching two offerings aimed at organizations wanting to implement hosted private clouds, whilst maintaining sovereign control over their data: Managed private cloud (hosting and operation of large-scale private clouds on virtual private or physically dedicated infrastructures) and Managed private cloud for e-business (a Platform as a Service dedicated to e-business publishers and operators). Both these offerings make use of Bull’s high-security, 12,000 m2 network of data centers across France and Europe; the primary centre was recently elected ‘best European data center’ by the European Union Data Centre Code of Conduct. This means Bull now offers a unique collection of customized cloud solutions.
4. The secure cloud
Security is one of the key pillars of Le cloud by Bull. With over 1,000 experts designing, developing and integrating solutions appropriate to the scale and nature of the risks involved, Bull Security Solutions delivers an end-to-end response to this critical challenge by launching a comprehensive cloud security offering, including a Cloud Security Assessment Service (risk assessment based on ISO 27000 and EBIOS), defining security architectures, fundamental protection solutions (system supervision tools, firewalls, intruder detection, data leak monitoring with visibull…), identity and access management (Evidian I&AM9, E-SSO, WAM), link and data security (TrustWay high-performance encryption) and dynamic security and incident response. In addition, as soon as a security incident is detected, the Crisis Management Service enables the enterprise to take the necessary human, organizational and technical measures to limit its impact.
An enterprise approach
With Le cloud by Bull, Bull is offering the first approach specifically dedicated to the enterprise cloud; enabling organizations to make the transition to their own, customized cloud, delivering the best business ROI.
Le cloud by Bull is particularly designed to tackle the issue of transforming critical applications so that they can be offered via an ‘on-demand’ service model; one of the key challenges of the enterprise cloud. Bull is the first supplier in this field to provide a continuum of cloud offerings; from definition through implementation to live operation for critical applications. Bull has built strong partnerships with VMware (around vCloud) and CA Technologies (around CA Automation Suite for the data center). This reflects its commitment to enabling organizations’ entire IT infrastructures (potentially involving numerous technologies and virtualisation platforms) to take on all the characteristics of a private cloud: service portals, dynamic provisioning, supervision and service quality management, automation and billing. In its major R&D projects, Bull is also engaged in pioneering work on the next generation of interoperable, high-performance clouds, within a wide ecosystem of partners, most notably under the auspices of projects such as CompatibleOne (in the Systematic competitiveness cluster), OpenStack and the OW2 CloudWare initiative. The challenge: to establish the foundations for interoperability between the multi-cloud platforms of the future.
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