While, for financial analysts, the objective of the new “One Bull” plan is to double the group’s operational performance to 7%, for the rest of the world – namely associates and customers – the ambition of the announced strategy is to refocus Bull on its business with the highest added value. The communication people put forward the Cloud and the Big Data, two catch terms in a context where Bull is clearly positioned to become the “trusted operator for business data.” But the details of the plan reveal a more structure-centric reorganization hinging around the two dimensions of “data infrastructure” and “data management,” with all that implies for technical team redeployment.

Indeed, One Bull, to be implemented until 2017, is based on three pillars, which can be considered logical in light of the group’s expertise: high performance computing and large infrastructures, complex software integration, and data security. As such, Bull wants to simplify its internal organization with a substantial reduction in its number of operational units, a global geographic grouping around five regional hubs (instead of the current 50 subsidiaries), and a unified sales organization. It must be stressed that this strategy does not include a layoff plan and that, at the same time, it earmarks a large proportion of revenue – 6% – to technical and growth investment via the “iBull” program. Not common currency these days.