Bull Acquires Postal Automation Business
from Business Objects; Bull's Subsidiary, AddressVision
Inc., Will Provide Postal Automated Software Solutions for
Government and Commercial Delivery Companies in the U.S. and
Abroad
BILLERICA, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- July
20, 2006 -- Bull today announced that it has acquired the
former Firstlogic, Inc. postal automation software business,
based in La Crosse, Wisconsin, from Business Objects
Americas. Business Objects retains the former Firstlogic
data quality business. In addition, Business Objects retains
the former Firstlogic Commercial Mail division, which
develops software to support direct and commercial mail
printers, publishers and distributors.
Financial terms of the acquisition were
not disclosed.
With the completion of this acquisition,
AddressVision Inc., a new wholly-owned Bull subsidiary,
joins Bull's worldwide postal practice. That business is
focused on providing enterprise-wide postal automation
solutions to domestic and international governments and
commercial delivery companies. Recent Bull wins in the
postal solutions market include a 147 million Euro agreement
with La Poste, the French Post Office, to deliver the
information system that will run its future mail sorting
machines.
"This acquisition provides Bull with
leading-edge software solutions and strengthens our offering
in an area where we are a major player," said Jonathan
Burbank, president of Bull HN in the United States.
"Driven by European mail market
deregulation, we will leverage this combination to modernize
postal services," said Yves Veret, Bull's general manager of
Defense and New Markets which includes the Postal practice.
>> About AddressVision
As a result of this acquisition, AddressVision will provide
software solutions to help organizations more accurately and
efficiently organize, process, and deliver mail, and
increase mail-piece effectiveness, while decreasing
processing times and costs. Its solutions will include
software designed for use on multi-line optical character
recognition (OCR) automation equipment that enables
organizations to consolidate and assign 11 digit barcodes to
mail pieces in compliance with United States Postal
Service(R) (USPS(R)) guidelines to gain postage discounts,
and software to help organizations manage and personalize
marketing lists. These solutions have been used by the USPS,
international postal services, telephone carriers,
print-and-mail service companies, and other companies which
manage and depend on large mailing lists.
>>About Bull
As one of the leading European IT companies, Bull delivers
open, flexible and secure information systems. The group
helps public and private sector customers transform their
information systems, applying its know-how and expertise in
three main areas:
-
Capitalizing on its extensive
mainframe experience, Bull designs and produces robust,
innovative and open servers, based on industry-standard
technologies;
-
Building on its alliances with leading
ISVs, Bull develops and implements flexible and
interoperable application infrastructures which give
business processes the freedom to evolve; and
-
Bringing together recognized expertise in
end-to-end IT security, Bull secures data and exchanges that
are critical in preserving customers' business integrity.
Bull has a particularly strong presence in
the public, healthcare, finance, telecommunications,
manufacturing and defense sectors. Its distribution network and
business partners cover more than 60 countries worldwide.
For more information visit:
http://www.bull.com
>>About Business Objects
Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence
(BI) software company, with more than 35,000 customers
worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500.
Business Objects helps organizations of all sizes create a
trusted foundation for decision making, gain better insight into
their business, and optimize performance. The company's
innovative business intelligence suite, BusinessObjects(TM) XI,
offers the BI industry's most advanced and complete solution for
performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis,
and enterprise information management. BusinessObjects XI
includes the award-winning Crystal line of reporting and data
visualization software. Business Objects has also built the
industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, and
offers consulting and education services to help customers
effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.
Business Objects has dual headquarters in San
Jose, Calif., and Paris, France. The company's stock is traded
on both the Nasdaq (BOBJ) and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250
- BOB) stock exchanges. More information about Business Objects
can be found at
www.businessobjects.com. |
