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Bull Data Systems, Inc. history
Bull Data Systems, Inc. company history timeline
In December 1989, Compagnie des Machines Bull (also known as Groupe Bull or Bull) purchased ZDS for $511 million.
One product introduced in 1989, a small notebook PC with a 2-inch floppy disk drive, failed to gain acceptance, and the company lost a major military contract to Unisys Corp.
Bull last week posted its second straight year of profitability that -- while modest by some standards -- is a sharp contrast to the half-decade of losses that began in 1989.
Francis Lorentz, elected chairman and CEO in 1989, attempted to bring his company's goals into focus.
1989: Company acquires Zenith Data Systems (ZDS), the microcomputer business of Zenith, for $1.4 billion.
In January 1991, ZDS appointed Enrico Pesatori as CEO. Pesatori was given the responsibility of turning the company around and restoring its status.
Honeywell pulled out of the business's United States operations in 1991, selling its remaining stake to Groupe Bull.
By 1991, the company was forced to turn to the French government, which provided Bull with a nearly FFr 10 billion rescue package.
In March 1992, however, the stores were closed.
The resulting Z-Series was released in June 1992.
Until 1992, a vestige of the organization's roots remained in the name of its Heath/Zenith Computer chain of retail outlets.
Total sales for 1992 were estimated at $900 million.
ZDS also unveiled a new series of desktop PCs in 1993, the Z-SELECT 100 line.
By then, Lorentz had been ousted, eventually replaced by Jean-Marie Descarpentries, who led the company on a vast streamlining effort beginning in 1993.
1993: Company acquires 20 percent of Packard Bell.
Then, the government started to reorganize the industry by merging into Bull the activities of other nationalized companies (essentially Thomson and CGE) and made Groupe Bull an independent state-owned company, a statute it kept until 1994.
By 1994, ZDS reported having installed a total of more than 700,000 PC's for the United States military and civilian agencies.
For ZDS, 1994 opened with the announcement of a new PC product line: the Z-STOR Personal Server.
By 1995, Bull's streamlining effort—which included cutting much of the company's bloated organization, including reducing its number of Parisian facilities from 25 to just five offices—enabled it to eke out a small profit.
That year also saw the release of a CMOS featuring 4.7 million transistors, and leading the way to the introduction of the first fifth-generation CMOS-based mainframe computer in 1997.
Descarpentries stepped down in 1997, replaced by Guy de Panafieu as CEO and chairman.
Yet in 1998, Bull added a new unit, the smart card operations of NBS Technology, and then transferred its software development arm to the United States.
1998: Compagnie des Machines Bull changes name to Bull S.A.
By the end of its 1999 fiscal year, the company's losses had mounted to EUR 288 million.
Despite several decades of operations in the United States, the North American market added only 7 percent of the company's sales in 2000.
Losses continued into 2000, once again topping the EUR 200 million mark.
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