HP Wins $48.5 Million Contract with European Commission

HP today announced that it has signed a $48.5 million contract with the European Commission in consortium with Steria to develop two important central information systems, the second generation of the Schengen Information System (SIS II) and the Visa Information System (VIS).

The SIS is the largest border control and police information system in the world and the development of SIS II is an important precondition for the lifting of border controls between current members of the Schengen area and the 10 member states that acceded to the European Union in May 2004.

HP was selected in consortium with Steria as well as two other European companies - Mummert in Germany and Primesphere in Luxembourg - to provide a high-quality technology model designed for the two information systems that offers a good value for taxpayers' money.

In addition, benchmarking tests conducted by the European Commission showed that HP's model remained fully operational in a disaster recovery situation where sites were nearly 500 miles apart. HP focused its approach on standardized platforms and optimized scalability, which are ideal when working with multiple countries.

"Ensuring citizen safety and security requires that technologies be able to adapt to the demands of global migration, border security, terrorism and crime prevention," said Bernard Meric, senior vice president and managing director, Europe Middle East and Africa, HP.

The existing SIS, currently used by 15 EU countries, was mandated by the Schengen Treaty, an agreement originally signed in 1985 to end internal border controls, harmonize external border controls and allow free movement of persons in Europe.

Its replacement, SIS II, will provide information on wanted persons as well as stolen vehicles, ID documents and banknotes through a database accessed by national police authorities of all participating member states.

Once it is fully functional in 2007, SIS II will be much more flexible than the current system and will also be able to store photographic images and fingerprints. In addition, the infrastructure of the new system will make it easier to adapt to future EU requirements.

VIS is a new centrally deployed, large-scale information system that will allow member state authorities to access all visa requests for entry to Schengen area countries. It is expected that there will be more than 20 million visa requests and more than 45 million requests to check the validity of issued visas made yearly.

Under the terms of the agreement, the consortium will provide the European Commission with Integrity Superdome servers based on the latest Intel® Itanium® processor, high-end and high-availability storage, and management of the system's infrastructure and business processes through HP OpenView software.