The Bull was the first company to pronounce the "World leading SAP benchmarks" test using the 8-processor Pentium III Xeon 500 MHz (Tanner) server and the database SQL Server 7.0. The results were announced at the CEBIT exhibition, and the Bull was presented as a recommended partner. The SAP has certified the Bull server benchmark against the R/3 SAP system, version 4.0. A remarkable outcome was achieved: 290 centralised 1,99 sec. response SAP SDs for a dialogue step on the ZDS/Bull EXPRESS5800 HV8600 server, operating in the Microsoft Windows NT® Enterprise Edition 4.0 and a database SQL Server 7.0. Also the Intel has contributed extensively to the Bull's success having provided the Pentium III Xeon 500 MHz processor early this year. The Bull has made considerable investments into their own SAP Competence Centre in response to a growing demand for the R/3 SAP Windows NT® system. The final design gives the Bull partners a faster SAP system application at an open platform system. This facilitates for the customers a full access to sizing, certification and pilot services, providing special sizing within 48 hours. According to Didier Breton, Servers Division Bull president, these achievements prove the company's contribution to the SAP design, as well as supreme professional knowledge of Intel-based Enterprise Class systems. "The increasing R/3 SAP applications call for a permanent availability and growing performance rate. Presently we benefit from years of experience collected from provision of widely accessible and optimally adjustable designs for our customers, and an excellent Windows NT offer. We have provided to our customers a high-performance Windows NT Cluster system (an 8-processor Cluster system) for the R/3 SAP application in the course of the past months. In addition, our co-operation with Microsoft both in Europe and US was rewarding in the outstanding results in detailed debugging of the Microsoft database SQL Server 7.0", adds D. Breton.