| 12
May 1975 |
Announcement by
the French Government (Michel d'Ornano, minister of Industry) of
the merger between CII and Honeywell-Bull. CII-HB territories
include Europe (except UK and Italy), Latin America, French
speaking Africa and Eastern countries. CII-HB and Honeywell have
cross-distribution agreements for all products. There is a
free cross-license agreement between companies. Future products
will be coordinated by a Technical Committee. The French
government guarantees to give Bull R&D subsidies and preferred
orders for a period of 4 years. Personnel transfers between CII and
CII-HB concerns 5000 people.
The Toulouse's plant of CII and its
minicomputer activities are not part of the deal and are transferred
to Thomson.
Honeywell gets $50M cash and the guarantee
of money-back in case of nationalization of CII-HB ( a claim from
the left parties since 1972) as well as opt-out rights in case of
disagreements on CII-HB's management. |
| 1975 |
The initial organization of
CII-HB includes R Gest (ex-CII) as responsible for sales in France
and Central Planning, Jack Petersen as head of engineering and
manufacturing and Maxime Bonnet as responsible for International
sales. |
| 1
Nov 1975 |
Creation of Compagnie CII-Honeywell-Bull
where Honeywell keeps 47% of shares instead of 66%).
Compagnie des Machines Bull, a French company owns 53%. CMB is a
holding company where CGE and the French Government are main
shareholders (20% each) |
| 23
Dec 1975 |
Conclusion of agreements
between French government, private shareholders of CII-HB and
Honeywell finalizing the merger. Honeywell obtains a clause of
compensation, in case of change in the French shareholdings.
Honeywell wanted to be allowed to exit CII-HB in case of a
nationalization of the French shareholding
The formal coming into force of those
agreements will be delayed until mid 1976 by judiciary actions
from CII labor Unions.
|
| Nov
1975 |
Departure of R Chambolle
(ex-CII), responsible of CII-HB large systems. Claude Bouvier
becomes head of Small Systems and Terminal, Marc Bourin's
direction incorporates large and medium systems. |
| 1976 |
Creation of a Central Planning
organization under François Sallé. |
| Feb
1976 |
Departure of R Gest for CGE/Sintra. |
|
|
| 26
Apr 1976 |
A project to use the Level 64
peripheral subsystems on ex-Unidata X4/X5 is initiated under the
code name Alida. |
| 16
Sep 1976 |
Announcement of a convergence
strategy between Level 64 and CII product lines, under the code
name "Unisys". that name having nothing to do with the
subsequent merge of Univac and Burroughs |
| 1976 |
personnel 18 651p (of which
14304p in France) |
| Jan
1977 |
Denial by J.P.
Brulé of CGE's intent to give special powers to an outside
director |
| Apr
1977 |
Termination of Alida project.
The CII engineering teams working on high end systems are
transferred to the P7G project , a Level-64 compatible project
(later announced as DPS-7) able to emulate Siris programs.
The (Iris-80 compatible) telephone
computer CS-40 is transferred to CGE.
|
| Jun
1977 |
With Honeywell's agreement and
cooperation, Bull initiates the design of a unified network
processor, based on Level 6 hardware and with network software
written by ex-CII engineers. It will be known internally as UNCP
Unified Control processor, before its introduction as a Datanet.
UNCP is a key component of Honeywell and CII-HB Distributed
Systems Architecture common to all those companies systems. |
| 1977 |
Introduction of Tape Handlers
PENA-30 (from CII origin) |
| 1977 |
Introduction of Cynthia disc
units |
|
1977 results: sales 3788MF net
result:144MF (including 460MF subsidies) personnel 18 043p (of
which 13 776 in France) |
| Jun
1978 |
GCOS3 is renamed GCOS8 for the
Level66 product line.
This announcement is a re-pricing of
software and includes a few improvements. However, the support of
NSA extended architecture will be introduced only in subsequent
releases. |
| 9
Jun 1978 |
CII-HB announces that it takes
the control of 60% of R2E. the French microcomputer computer, the
first in the world to provide a microprocessor computer in 1972. |
| Oct
1978 |
Christian Lehmann replaces
Claude Bouvier as head of the small systems and terminal division. |
| late
1978 |
The CII-HB board
(Honeywell and CGE) opposes a planned 200MF take-over of
AEG-Olympia and Hermes-Precisa, two German companies operating in
the office automation business. |
| 7
Nov 1978 |
Meeting in Paris
between J.P Brulé and the president of NEC (K Kobayashi) about
the renewal of licenses between the companies. NEC does not accept
the CII-HB proposal of renewing those licenses on the base
of free cross-licensing all the products of both companies.
In fact, the agreements will be renewed in 1984 with Honeywell
first on NEC's conditions, Groupe Bull will align itself on
Honeywell's positions. |
| 1978 |
reintroduction of MULTICS in
Europe.
The level68 reintroduction encounters an extremely good
success, specially among the scientific customers of CII Iris 80. |
| 1978 |
The French
Government establishes a "Components Plan" with several
electronic companies, one of which is Eurotechnique, a subsidiary
of Saint-Gobain. Eurotechnique establishes a new plant in Rousset,
near Marseilles, to manufacture semiconductors chips under National Semi license. |
| 1979 |
1978 results: sales 4456MF net
result 190.4MF (including subsidies of 212MF) |
| Jan
1979 |
Agreement with CPT for
the non-exclusive distribution of word processing equipments by
Bull (TTX-80 and TTX-90). |
| 1979 |
Design of P7G-CCR by the Angers
engineering unit. P7G-CCR a medium size processor combining
the P7G technology and Level-64 logic.
It will be renamed Taurus and will be introduced as DPS-7-x5. P7G
is renamed P7G-E, it will be code named Leo.
The design point of the P7G project had suffered an upside
pull to upgrade Iris 80 and was a difficult upgrade path for
Levl64 users. |
| 1979 |
Introduction of Level64/DPS ,
an improved version of Level64. to match the IBM 4331 and 4341
aggressive announcements.
The new models, thanks to a significant sales price reduction
will lead to an overflow of orders saturating the Angers plant,
already quite busy by the technology change to micro packaging. |
| 1979 |
Introduction of Level 61/DPS
a multi-user entry system, built on a revamped level-61 CRP
(centralized resource processor) and a front-end processor (from
Datapoint) DRP (distributed resource processor) |
| 2
Apr 1979 |
the P7G-E (alias Leo) prototype
is powered on.. Its debug phase ended on 11 Jul 1980 with GCOS
running. |
| May
1979 |
The US Department of Defense
selects Jean Ichbiah's project for the language ADA. |
| Jun
1979 |
Christian Lehmann is promoted
general manager for all systems. (engineering, planning,
manufacturing.
Claude Boulle is promoted as manager of Networking and
Minicomputers
Georges Lepicard is promoted manager of GMS (large and medium
systems), reporting to Jack Petersen, replacing Marc Bourin
who keeps the management of technology and logistics. |
| 1979 |
Introduction of CP8 smart card |
| 4
Jul 1979 |
Creation of CII-HB Systèmes,
a joint venture between CII-HB (50.5%) and SESA. |
| 18
Sep 1979 |
Announcement of P7G-E as
DPS-7/80 and 82 |
| 24
Sep 1979 |
Compagnie Générale
d'Electricité (the future Alcatel) gives up, at the demand of the
French government, its 20% shares in
CII-HB to Compagnie de Saint-Gobain that expects a diversification
in electronics.
This move was expected since the
beginning of the year. However, it was delayed by Honeywell's
consideration of its opting-out rights.
|
| 1979 |
Announcement by CII-HB and
Honeywell of the Distributed System Architecture developed in
common from the basis of CII New Network Architecture |
| 1980 |
1979 results: sales 5128MF net
result 210MF (including a 110MF subsidy) |
| 4
Feb 1980 |
Roger Fauroux (PDG of Saint-Gobain)
replaces Henri Delaage as chairman of Compagnie des Machines Bull,
the CII-HB's holding company. |
| 18
Apr 1980 |
Saint-Gobain
announces the acquisition of 33% of Olivetti |
| 4
Jul 1980 |
Francis Ackermann is named
general manager of Angers plant. He will replace Robert Audoin as
president of Bull Anjou in October 1980. |
| 11
Sep 1980 |
P7G-CCR is ready to run GCOS. |
| Oct
1980 |
Saint-Gobain takes over 51% of
Compagnie des Machines Bull that bears also the 23.3%
participation of Saint Gobain in Olivetti..
The Olivetti's strategy by Saint-Gobain, animated by Alain
Minc, was opposed by Jean-Pierre Brulé, desiring to penetrate the
office automation market through the effective control of a
specialized company, what become impossible within the minority
position that Saint-Gobain took in Olivetti. |
| 22
Dec 1980 |
First shipment of DPS-7/65 to
EDF |
| 1981 |
First operation of the
automated logistics complex at the Angers Plant (CIL Centre
International de Logistique) |
| 1981 |
1980 Results: sales
~6100MF net results 180MF (including 20MF subsidies) |
| 5
Apr 1981 |
CII-HB takes a minority
participation in ACSYS, the company founded by Gene Amdahl for
implementing IBM compatible system in WSI wafer-scale integration.
The company will better be known as Trilogy Corp.
CII-HB intents was to acquire the technology from Trilogy more
than to enter the IBM mainframe clone market. The investment was
written-off in 1984. |
| 6
Jan 1981 |
Jean Pierre Brulé takes
directly in charge the engineering & manufacturing Group,
replacing Jack Petersen. Christian Lehmann returns to
distributed systems. |
| Jan
1981 |
Alain Minc (from Saint-Gobain)
named Bull's CFO. |
| 24
Mar 1981 |
CII-HB buys the majority of
shares of Correlative Systems International, a Belgian company
working on image processing. |
| 6
Apr 1981 |
Saint-Gobain asks
for a redistribution of 45% (and later 50%) of CII-HB's net
results to the shareholders, weakening seriously the financial
stability of CII-HB. |
| May
1981 |
Acquisition of a new plant at
Joué-les-Tours.
Its main activity will be the assembling of Level6
minicomputers. The production begun on 22 Mar 1982. |
| May
1981 |
Logabax, a French
office computer company, goes in bankruptcy requesting desperately
assistance from the new leftist French government. . |
| Jun
1981 |
Georges Lepicard becomes
manager of System Engineering and is replaced at the head of GMS
by Christian Joly for hardware and Michel Rocher for software. |
| July
1981 |
Jacques Weber (ex-CEO of CISI,
a French software & services company) is named head
of engineering & manufacturing group.
|
| 3
July 1981 |
Jean-Pierre Brulé is demoted
by the CII-HB Board lead by Saint-Gobain.
A strategy conflict opposed J.P. Brulé and Saint-Gobain about
Saint-Gobain intent to base its office automation strategy on a
minority shareholding position at Olivetti, at the expense of re-enforcing
CII-HB's assets. After several disputes with Brulé on the
subject, Saint-Gobain decided to take over the ailing French
manufacturer Logabax and to associate it to Olivetti, instead of
CII-HB. Honeywell supported Saint-Gobain's position
He is replaced , as PDG, by Maxime Bonnet who was CII-HB's general manager of
sales. |
| Oct
1981 |
Honeywell initiates a
negotiation with Saint-Gobain to possibly retreat from CII-HB capital. |
| Nov
1981 |
Managers faithful
to JP Brulé : Jacques Perrichi (Human Resources) and Pierre
Lepicard (Finances) are fired. |
| Jan
1982 |
The French government
disapproves the conclusion of Saint Gobain's negotiation with
Honeywell and takes over the negotiation directly with Bernard
Esambert. |
| 1982 |
1981 Results: sales
7347MF net results (losses) -430MF |
| 30
Mar 1982 |
World wide announcement of DSA
Distributed Systems Architecture, in common with Honeywell. |
| 21
Apr 1982 |
CII-HB is nationalized by the
French government. Saint-Gobain is also nationalized, but Roger
Fauroux remains in charge. Jacques Stern (founder of SESA) is
named PDG.
Compagnie des Machines Bull's shares will be exchanged for 12%
interest bonds in July 1983.
Honeywell exercizes its opting out rights, obtaining
$150M for 27% shares more than the books value).
Honeywell keeps 20% shares with $20M of guaranteed dividend for
each of 5 next years. Cross licenses are no more free, Honeywell
receiving $12M per plus $5M to use Honeywell trade-mark. Honeywell
renews the territories agreement of 1976.Honeywell abandon veto
rights on Bull's strategy.
|
