French Bull Acquires Egyptian Storage Integrator VAS

Bull announces the acquisition of the storage integration business of VAS, a privately-held company based in Cairo, Egypt.

VAS is a storage distributor and integrator in the Egyptian market, and a local partner of EMC. VAS customers include major actors in the Egyptian telecommunications sector and a strong presence in the oil & gas sector.

Bull will be the majority shareholder in a new company, VAS Integrated Solutions. Khaled Khairallah, founder of VAS, will remain a shareholder and CEO of the new structure. He will be responsible for the integration of VAS within the Bull group, management of local sales and services operations, and the development and growth of VAS Integration Solutions.

VAS Integrated Solutions strengthens Bull’s presence in the MEA region where Bull is already represented in over 14 countries in North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. With a domestic IT market of $1.4 billion forecast to grow by over 16% a year to $2.6 billion in 2014, Egypt is one of the largest and most dynamic markets in the region.

Operating in more than 50 countries throughout the world and based in Paris, France, Bull is in mission-critical digital systems, with a product portfolio extending from security solutions, through commercial servers and storage to supercomputing.

"Joining the Bull group is a major step in the development of VAS," states Khaled Khairallah, CEO of VAS Integrated Solutions. "Being a part of the Bull Group will enable us not only to strengthen our focus and support on EMC solutions and services, but also to extend our expertise to cover all aspects of the IT infrastructure".

Founded in 2000, VAS has grown to become the leading supplier of storage solutions based on EMC technology in Egypt with over 50 employees and 2010 revenues of approximately $25 million. Bull is one of the EMEA region’s largest EMC partners, and the integration of VAS within the Bull group was made in close consultation with EMC, and is a part of Bull and EMC’s strategic development plan in the region.

"VAS has in-depth storage and virtualisation expertise that both extends our reach into the high-growth Egyptian market, but also strengthens our delivery capability at a regional level," notes Philippe Miltin, Executive VP of Bull’s Computing Solutions Business Line. "Moving forward, we will be working with EMC to develop VAS Integrated Solutions as a services and distribution hub for the surrounding Gulf and Central African area".

"We are delighted to see two of our valued channel partners come together to combine their strengths," said Mohammed Amin, EMC Vice President and General Manager for Turkey, Emerging Africa and Middle East. "EMC Information infrastructure solutions enjoy a leadership position around the world, as well as within the MEA market. EMC together with Bull and VAS Integrated Solutions are ideally positioned to support customers to embark on the transformation towards the next generation information infrastructure through the Journey to the Private Cloud".

Financial terms of the transaction are not disclosed.