Compagnie des Machines Bull SA announced in January its largest ever Russian deal – a $50m contract with the Russian Federal Tax Police which ranks as the largest computer contract signed by any computer company in Russia in 1995. The deal calls for a huge federal-wide system which will exchange data between tax offices across Russia and will be used to verify the tax declarations filed by companies. The system includes all 89 Federal Tax Police administrative offices in the largest Russian cities. The Federal Tax Police is one of biggest administrative organizations in the Federal government, employing over 100,000 people. This contract will be an important reference for Bull in other Eastern European and world-wide markets, says Manuel Piaza-Rodrigo, general manager of Bull Moscow. The deal was signed last year and some of the computers have already been delivered. The contract is scheduled to run for two and a half years. During this time the computers will be delivered in phases, the overall architecture of the system will be refined and the employees of the Federal Tax Police will be trained. Bull managed to line up governmental-level support for this huge contract. It is partly funded under the Russian-French International Protocol of 1992. The company says a group of French banks headed by Bank Credit Industriel et Commercial SA and the Russian bank Vneshtorgbank were also involved in the funding process. Though Bull will use sub-contractors in this project, the company says under the terms of its agreement, it cannot name them. The system has three tiers and includes 100 Bull Escala PowerPC-based multiprocessor servers running AIX, 600 Zenith Pentium-based Z-servers and 3,000 networked Z-Station personal computers. The database will be Oracle. The contract also calls for an integrated systems management facility and Bull will be supplying its Integrated System Management product. Bull also has extensive plans for training Federal Tax Police staff under the contract.
