Database consolidation, hardware upgrades, mergers and acquisitions, and the decision to virtualize server hardware all drive the decision to migrate data into new systems to stay competitive. Bull HN Information Systems (Bull) announces the formation of a Database Migration Business Unit ( www.postgresmigrations.com ) offering comprehensive solutions to migrate legacy and other relational databases to open source PostgreSQL, including consulting, implementation and optimization services for both infrastructure and applications. The business unit's formation leverages Bull's more than 40 years of experience with major, enterprise-level database migrations worldwide.

According to National Sales Director Jim Ulrey, "Bull has a long history in database technologies and their applications. We primarily work with PostgreSQL in order to deliver major savings in licensing and support fees to our customers, and have had great success with both proprietary relational database migrations and legacy non-relational database migrations. This includes large customers with both high-performance and availability demands.

"We understand that data is the lifeblood of today's business. Therefore, when it comes to mission critical projects like data migration, companies require an experienced partner like Bull--one that can offer proven solutions, solid methodology and a seamless transition. Our new business unit is dedicated to excellence and committed to helping our clients meet their business objectives," concluded Ulrey.

About Bull, Architect of an Open World

Bull is an Information Technology company, dedicated to helping corporations and public sector organizations optimize the architecture, operations and the financial return of their Information Systems and their mission-critical related businesses. For more information, please visit www.postgresmigrations.com .

SOURCE: Bull HN Information Systems

    Integrated Communications Management 
    Patrick Riley, 603-893-6510 
    pjriley@icmarcom.com

VANCOUVER, Canada — May 1, 2012 — Global content services and photography provider VRX Studios turned to Microsoft’s platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud platform, Windows Azure, to replace its costly, unscalable, server-based digital asset management system and, in the process, developed one of the world’s first 100 percent cloud-based digital asset management systems. Built 100 percent from the ground up on Windows Azure, MediaValet can scale to meet the needs of any size company, in any industry, and is available on datacenters around the world. Today MediaValet is a stand-alone service that is quickly gaining market share in a 20-year-old, billion-dollar, global industry.

“The moment we launched MediaValet, we were competing head-to-head, on a global stage, with the largest digital asset management software providers on the planet,” said David MacLaren, founder and CEO of VRX Studios and now of MediaValet. “Windows Azure enabled us to harness more than a decade of experience in producing, managing, distributing and licensing digital media to build an enterprise-class digital asset management system — in less than 12 months — that can compete with the best and biggest in the digital asset management industry.”

Windows Azure enables MediaValet to scale in real time to accommodate its customers’ daily storage, bandwidth and computing requirements as well as easily and cost-effectively scale over time to meet the company’s long-term needs. Azure deployment eliminated the formidable upfront investment and ongoing maintenance costs faced by MediaValet in providing a digital asset management system that is available on datacenters throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

In considering their options, the MediaValet team contemplated Amazon Web Services and Google Apps but found neither met their needs. “We turned to Windows Azure because it gave us the tools, the infrastructure and the support to solve our short- and long-term business challenges,” MacLaren said. “As a platform-as-a-service cloud offering, Azure lets us focus all our resources on building the solution we required and left building, managing and maintaining the global infrastructure that we required entirely up to Microsoft.”

The VRX Studios team initially pitched their new digital asset management system to travel and hospitality companies, which made up the bulk of their customer list; however, the surprising range of businesses calling for service estimates post-launch compelled the team to expand their sales and marketing efforts to cover all industries on all continents. With the realization that managing digital assets had become a daunting challenge for companies of all sizes all over the world, MacLaren decided to build a new team to focus solely on this new opportunity. That new team became MediaValet.

The scalability of Window Azure enabled MediaValet to meet the needs of small regional companies with hundreds of gigabytes of assets and a few dozen users all the way up to multinational corporations with terabytes of assets and tens of thousands of users. In addition to MediaValet’s inherent scalability, Microsoft Corp.’s global network of datacenters allowed MediaValet to offer its digital asset management services on a global scale on the day it launched, enabling real-time access to a company’s digital assets. Other key features that MediaValet inherited include triple redundancy and geo-replication, which provides backup against regional disasters or conflicts. All in all, Windows Azure helped MediaValet launch a world-class digital asset management system in half the time and for half the investment than was previously possible.

“On day one we came to market with an industry-leading set of features and benefits, delivered on a global scale, that no one could match for the price,” MacLaren said. “Before Azure, building and launching such a system was practically impossible unless you were heavily funded and had a massive IT team.”

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.