Bull strengthens focus on HPC with Andy Grant appointment

In his new role, Grant will focus on growing the HPC and Big Data business for Bull in the UK. It is a task that has taken on greater significance following Bull’s recent acquisition by European IT services giant, Atos, which is likely to lead to a stronger focus on supercomputing and related data analytics opportunities.

“Our HPC business underpins our entire strategy so this is a key appointment for us. We believe Andy is ideally suited to this critical role.” says Andrew Carr, CEO, Bull UK & Ireland. “He brings expertise in, and an understanding of, the UK HPC market; customer requirements and the Government’s focus on ongoing investment in HPC and Big Data to help the UK transition to a digital information economy. We are delighted to have him on board to continue the work that we have already begun to increase our market share and market penetration in HPC.”

As big data and analytics markets come together to drive HPC opportunities, Grant is focused on building on Bull’s great strengths in these complementary market sectors.

“With the ongoing explosion in big data volumes, HPC solutions will become increasingly relevant across all market sectors,” he says, “enabling businesses to deploy the necessary processing power to take advantage of big data and achieve enhanced decision-making power. As a result, we will witness traditional HPC and analytics architectures coming together – and I see that as a fantastic opportunity for Bull to grow its presence and influence in these markets.”

In line with Bull’s strategy of bringing together services and technical capabilities to deliver optimum outcomes for customers, Grant will also focus on driving new business with customers looking to outsource the management of their HPC systems through an approach based on collaborative engagement. He will concentrate on delivering ease-of-use, cost-savings and faster time to insight by making easy to access web portals the mechanism of choice for users to access HPC systems.
Grant will take on the role of an evangelist, ensuring the Bull HPC value proposition is properly explained to, and understood by, customers and prospects. He also plans to take Bull’s skills and expertise in HPC to fast-growing market sectors which are reliant on HPC technology but in which Bull has not traditionally played, including, most notably, financial services and life sciences.

Prior to joining Bull, Grant was at IBM for nine years. Initially he was part of a team developing HPC solutions within IBM’s Strategic Growth Business Unit. Then, for four years, he was IBM’s HPC Sales and Business Development Leader with responsibility for large HPC customers in the Government, defence and academic sectors. Latterly, he become Client Executive for the UK research councils within the IBM Central Government and Defence team.

Before moving to IBM, Grant was HPC Sales Manager, Academic and Sciences Business for Silicon Graphics and previous to that, he was Research Computing Manager at the University of Manchester.

Grant currently sits on the E-infrastructure Leadership Council (ELC), a body established by the Science Minister, which advises government on all aspects of e-infrastructure including networks, data stores, computers, software and skills.