Bull and GlassHouse Join Forces in Europe

Bull, in open, flexible and secure information systems and one of Europe’s leading players in the IT industry, and GlassHouse Technologies, an independent IT infrastructure consulting and services firm, have entered into a strategic agreement to jointly deliver storage consulting services throughout Europe.

Under the terms of the agreement, Bull will use GlassHouse methodologies and tools within a new consulting practice in Bull’s StoreWay business unit.

The new storage assessment services will help organisations identify and quantify potential storage economies and the benefits of new storage optimisation technologies. Combining storage expertise, methodology and tools, these services aim to provide pragmatic advice and rapidly measurable benefit through short and focused service engagements.

Bull and GlassHouse will jointly deliver assessments through Bull’s existing sales and services organisations and will complement the extensive storage service offering that Bull already has in place providing design, implementation and support services.

"Faced with continuing high levels of data growth and budgetary restrictions, IT organisations are increasingly seeking to reduce the cost and improve the efficiency of their existing storage infrastructures rather than simply adding raw storage capacity," said Benoit Hallez, Director of Bull’s StoreWay business unit. "This partnership will help our customers meet these challenges by combining GlassHouse’s experience and leadership in the storage assessment field and Bull’s long experience in storage integration and presence in the European IT market."

The initial assessment service offer will address major storage challenges currently faced by IT organisations including the optimisation of data backup infrastructures, data classification and tiered storage, and data deduplication and provisioning

"This partnership is complementary to Bull’s strategic direction and integral to GlassHouse’s expansion into mainland Europe. Bull’s significant market penetration into thousands of organisations, extensive IT infrastructure expertise and dedicated focus on storage integration make them an ideal partner," said Mark Shirman, CEO of GlassHouse Technologies. "We are looking forward to a strong partnership that leverages our strategic consulting expertise and Bull’s diverse integration and support services in the European market."

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GlassHouse received a total of more than $68 million in financial funding on six rounds since its inception in 2001. It announced an IPO in December 2007, hoping to raise $100 million, but withdraws it for "current market conditions". Since 2003, we have counted eleven companies acquired by GlassHouse, the last one being UK IT consulting firm TPP Group last year.

Bull, a former computer manufacturer, is now mainly an integrator. Storage is handled by its StoreWay business unit that resells products from companies including Brocade, CommVault, Crossroads, EMC, IBM (SVC) NetApp, Overland, Sun StorageTek, Symantec and Synerway, but has developed its own software, Virtuo, for enterprise backup operations. Bull is also involved in HPC market with the help of DataDirect Networks for storage. Another Bull's division has designed and sells an external encryption HDD, named globull.

Benoît Hallez, director of StoreWay, didn’t want to reveal the sales of its division, but said that they increase 25% in 2008 with a respectable 4Q08 demonstrating 15% year-to-year growth. He also said: “Storage and associated services represent 15% of the total Bull revenues”. It means around €170 million for the year as the French firm announced total sales of €1,132.8 million for the calendar year 2008 (growing 1.4% from 2007). Hallez added that Bull was the number one European partner of EMC and NetApp last year in term of growth. Dell and Fujitsu are the biggest reseller of these two U.S. storage manufacturers on the continent.

The agreement between the two partners is for Europe only. Bull tries several times, but without success, to enter into the U.S. storage market but has no intention to come back there with the help of GlassHouse, based in Framingham, MA.

Why do they join forces? “I met them around nine months ago as I was searching for more capacity in pre-sales consulting with a smart methodology and expertise”. And that’s the specialty of GlassHouse. "They have a brilliant CEO [Mark Shirman] with competent people. If they have offices in UK following an acquisition [TPP Group] and in Israel, they have difficulties in the other countries because a problem of foreign language. We are not going to co-brand our respective offering but to use their methodology and their software.”

Last year, there were rumors of an eventual business partnership or a merger with Fujitsu Siemens, now Fujitsu, as the two companies have the same kind of storage activities, with several identical partners, one being really strong in France and the other one in Germany. If Hallez met recently Dr. Helmut Beck, at the head of Fujitsu storage in Europe, it was only to exchange information on their activity and their partners. No more.