Bull, at the heart of IP network innovation (ENERGy) --- Bull, au coeur de l’innovation des réseaux IP

Bull, along with Thales and a dozen other major enterprises and research centers, has presented the completed European ENERGy project to representatives from ITEA 2 (the European support program for advanced software research projects), as well as the French Ministry of Finance and INRIA (the French national IT and automation research institute).

The level of innovation demonstrated in the finished prototypes has attracted keen interest, and ITEA warmly congratulated the consortium for the results it had obtained. The aim of the project was to implement innovative solutions for automating IP network management. Bull and its subsidiary Evidian worked on an intelligent monitoring approach to service quality, and more precisely a system for activating observation points dynamically and automatically with network events.

The ENERGy project: added value for telecoms operators
As part of the ENERGy project – financed by the European Union to promote innovation, to encourage collaboration between European partners, and direct research towards emerging market sectors – Bull joined forces with the German University of Ilmenau and IFAK (the German institute for automation and communication) to develop an optimized network management platform. The solution is mainly targeting operators, since it opens up horizons for new applications in VPN MPLS network management and intelligent SQM (Service Quality Management). MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) is a network technique aimed at optimizing the routing of IP networks. The solution guarantees a high quality of service thanks to redundant communication networks, all of which utilize MPLS. It features dynamic systems administration, guaranteeing the overall quality of the connection. The network equipment monitors and actions are all monitored by the same management application via Web services.

The solution provides interconnections for industrial networks via redundant public networks. An innovative technology has been defined to optimize data collection on network performance levels dynamically. This technology enables a significant reduction in the bandwidth needed to monitor operations, and this leaves more resources available for user connections as a result.