RATP chooses Bull and its SafeKit software for the centralized control room on Line 1 of the Paris Metro

Transport authority RATP has chosen Bull's SafeKit software for the centralized control room on Line 1 of the Paris Metro, to improve the operation of 'critical' applications that are vital to the business and cannot, therefore, be subject to even the slightest downtime. The solution has the additional advantage that it runs on systems that are already in place.

Paris, February  26, 2013 -

As part of the program to automate Line 1 of the Paris Metro, which carries some 725,000 passengers a day, RATP has chosen the Evidian SafeKit solution from Bull.

The management of the centralized control room for Line 1 is a 'critical' application: even in the case of an IT failure, the control room operators still have to have access to information about and images of the network in order to ensure service continuity and guarantee passenger safety.

This is why RATP has opted for a high technology solution featuring:

• High availability: providing guaranteed 24x7 supervision, thanks to back-up servers that are ready to take over, immediately, at all times

• Load balancing: the application must be able to support a very large number of simultaneous connections

• 'IT failure resistance': not all the servers are housed in the same place, which helps protect against fire or flooding, for example.

SafeKit is one of the only products available worldwide that combines load balancing and automatic failover after an incident with real-time data replication (for high availability and disaster resilience).

"Automating Line 1 of the Paris Metro is a major project for RATP, required a centralized control room designed to resist IT failures. SafeKit " a purely software solution " delivers the three key functions we need: load balancing between servers, automatic failover after an incident and real-time data replication. It was very simple to split our servers across remote machine rooms," says Stéphane Guilmin, Project Manager at RATP.

"The Centralized Control Room (CCR) of a subway line is a hub of critical activity. The operators managing the line must react immediately to the slightest incident. The idea of an IT failure compromising the operators' view of the line's activity is totally unthinkable. More than 20 SafeKit clusters running under Windows and Linux are in operation on this project," explains Bruno Rochat, SafeKit Product Manager at Bull Evidian. "Thanks to Bull's expertise is mission-critical systems that this highly innovative product has been developed and is being marketed to address this type of challenge."

About Bull

Bull is a leader in secure mission-critical digital systems. The Group is dedicated to developing and implementing solutions where computing power and security serve to optimize its customers' information systems, to support their business.

Bull operates in high added-value markets including computer simulation, Cloud computing and 'computing power plants', outsourcing and security.

Currently Bull employs around 9,000 people across more than 50 countries, with over 700 staff totally focused on R&D. In 2011, Bull recorded revenues of €1.3 billion.

For more information visit: http://www.bull.com
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