Groupe BULL chronology

BULL computers chronological history

Groupe Bull, a nationalized company and a world-wide company 1982-1994
Soon after Jacques Stern and Francis Lorentz were assigned to their functions, they had to handle the restructuring of the whole French computer industry, dealing in particular with the Thomson and CGE subsidiaries that had been let out of CII-HB in 1975.
In parallel they had to address serious financial problems at CII-HB, due, in particular, to carried-over commitments from CII and to the large industrial investment made in Angers plant.
Jacques Stern had the vision of a world that emerged eventually in the 1990s, a world of open systems where proprietary systems are passé, where software and system integration are the main business. However, he inherited of an IBM-like company, a hardware dominated company where in-house development was the rule, where open software had never been envisioned, and where the sales network was still dreaming of "locked" customers.
Bull initiated an avalanche of agreements and contracts to try to catch up with this new vision. Many Silicon Valley companies were visiting Bull, as part of their financing rounds.

Bull was also subject to the trend of the French governments to play industrial "Meccano" with industrial companies, forcing Bull to absorb other IT companies in 1983, willing to marry it with Hewlett Packard in 1991 and deciding finally to abandon the control.

Jacques Stern

Mar 1982	Publication of Abel Farnoux report on electronics industry policy (Filière Electronique)
28 Apr 1982	Jacques Stern (ex-SESA's CEO) is named Chairman of CII-HB (Groupe Bull) replacing Maxime Bonnet.
May 1982	The "Plan d'Action pour la Filière Electronique" is published by the French Government, dropping scientific supercomputers
1 Jun 1982	Decision to use copper instead of gold for DPS-7 substrates This manufacturing cost-cutting decision lead to horrendous reliability problems on DPS-7 products.
8 Jun 1982	Signature of agreements with Honeywell
28 Jul 1982	Jean-Pierre Chevènement, minister of Industry, gets Government approval for a 5-years electronics industry plan of 140BF.
Sep 1982	Francis Lorentz (from Lyonnaise des Eaux) named Bull's general manager
Sep 1982	Decision of French minister of Industry to join Bull to SEMS (a subsidiary of Thomson)
	1982 sales 8130MF losses 1251MF, personnel 25 600p
10 Feb 1983	"Contrat de Plan" signed between Bull and the French government
12 Apr 1983	departure of Marc Bourin for Logabax France
1 May 1983	Jean Antier (ex-mgr. of IBM Montpellier plant) is named head of Angers plant. Francis Ackermann is named head of DPS-7 product line, reporting to Jacques Weber.
19 May 1983	Groupe Bull regroups the assets of CII-HB, Thomson's DAP, R2E, SEMS and Transac. Groupe Bull includes CII-HB (for systems), Bull-Peripherals (at Belfort), Bull-SEMS, and Bull-Transac
Oct 1983	Compagnie des Machines Bull sells its Olivetti's 22% shares AT&T will take an equivalent share of Olivetti, that was repossessed by the Italian company later.
1983	Design of Lyra, a quad-processor version of DPS-7x0 (Leo)
Sep 1983	CDR (conceptual design review) of Ares, a CMOS DPS-7 compatible system
1983	Creation of ABC Bull, a Brazilian joint venture to manufacture DPS-7 for the local market.
	1983 results sales 11,639MF, losses 625MF
27 Feb 1984	renaming of GCOS64 as GCOS-7 for DPS-7 systems
19 Jun 1984	Formal start of the project of a supercomputer Isis, a 200Mflops system., for defense and related applications.
Apr 1984	Philippe Picard (ex-responsible of X-25 Transpac PTT's network) enters Bull as head of network activities, replacing Claude Boulle, named at Transac engineering.
Oct 1984	Bull Micral (ex-R2E) is integrated into Bull Transac, headed by Jean Valent.