Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS) today unveiled a major new technology strategy aimed at helping clients evolve their organizations into real-time enterprises, in which business requirements directly drive information technology (IT) use. This solutions-led strategy integrates services, software and hardware from Unisys and partners to meet clients’ specific requirements. It enables organizations to retain and extend their current IT investment as they transform the IT infrastructure to support continually emerging business demands.

As part of this strategy, Unisys today rolled out the first in a series of solutions to help clients dynamically shift IT resources as needed to meet the strategic needs of the business while reducing costs and energy use. The new solutions include Unisys Infrastructure Management Suite, a set of data center solutions enabled by Unisys services and underpinned by new software. Unisys also announced new blade and midrange servers to expand clients’ choice in systems to power a real-time infrastructure.

“Our clients are grappling daily with a host of challenges that impede their ability to compete in an increasingly dynamic marketplace: server sprawl, underutilization of existing IT resources, escalating power consumption and space crunch in the data center, to name a few,” said Rich Marcello, president, Unisys Systems and Technology. “With our combined services and engineering skills, Unisys is preeminently positioned to provide multi-vendor IT solutions that help clients turn those challenges into business opportunities. We can help clients use their existing IT assets more effectively and save money while evolving their IT infrastructure to better support their business in real time.”

The new technology strategy is also aimed at increasing Unisys business in the rapidly growing market for IT infrastructure solutions that enable companies to transform into real-time enterprises. Independent research firms view the market for real-time infrastructure – including virtualized hardware, software and related services – as a multi-billion-dollar segment poised for strong growth over the next few years. Unisys brings to this market decades of experience in mission-critical computing, combined with a nearly $5 billion services business and deep understanding of how to design and integrate multi-vendor systems and software in heterogeneous environments.

“Virtualization in data centers, especially those deploying x86 servers, is accelerating in terms of customer adoption, but many customers now realize that they need to take steps to ensure high availability and advanced management for enterprise, mission-critical applications running in a virtualized IT infrastructure,” said Jean S. Bozman, Research Vice President, IDC. “Unisys clearly understands that situation, and has crafted a strategy that addresses the full complexity of those IT challenges for today’s data centers. Integrating services expertise, systems and software engineering skill, and leveraging the work of expert partners, including software companies, Unisys is providing a portfolio of solutions to provision and manage a virtualized infrastructure in mission-critical computing environments for the enterprise.”

New Management Suite Provides Missing Link Between Business and IT

The new Unisys Infrastructure Management Suite solutions address a key client requirement: automated management of IT infrastructure in a way that enhances real-time services to the business while reducing operating costs. Applying these solutions can reduce the servers required in the data center by up to two- thirds and immediately lower power consumption and cooling requirements for data center equipment. This creates significant space, energy and carbon footprint improvements.

Using leading-edge middleware from Unisys and its partners, along with Unisys services, the Infrastructure Management Suite solutions include:

• Virtual Orchestration, which provides automated self-service provisioning and management of virtualized server environments;
• Disaster Recovery Automation and Repurposing, which enables rapid repurposing of infrastructure resources within minutes to support disaster recovery requirements;
• Test & Development Infrastructure Automation, which facilitates the transition to different systems and eliminates the manual effort, potential for error, and time delay associated with provisioning servers;
• Automation and Efficiency for Production Infrastructure, which enables a pool of server resources to deliver just-in-time changes to accommodate business demand;
• Servers as a Utility, a custom solution leveraging Unisys outsourcing services expertise, which enables flexible provisioning of servers to support business-critical applications; and
• Data Center Migration, another custom solution, which draws on Unisys best practices and services to help clients more efficiently create data centers or transition to new ones.

The innovative middleware underpinning the new Unisys Infrastructure Management Suite solutions is based on software from key partners as well as from Unisys. It allows clients to create a sense-and-respond infrastructure for automated, real-time infrastructure management. The key components available now are:

• Unisys uAdapt™ software, which enables repurposing of server assets on demand in real time. It is based on software from Unisys partner Scalent Systems;
• Unisys uOrchestrate™ software, based on software from Unisys partner Enigmatec Corporation, which automates key IT processes that run the business – for example, keeping service level agreements (SLAs) within policy; and
• Unisys uChargeback™ software, developed by Unisys, which oversees and measures resource usage, enabling costs to be charged back to the responsible business organization.

In 2008, Unisys also plans to add software capabilities for service governance and provisioning to the suite to control the way IT resources support critical business applications and automate allocation of IT resources according to application needs, respectively.

Unisys Infrastructure Management Suite solutions provide flexibility for a client to begin deployment at any point, whether through architecture services, business process or applications services, or at the infrastructure level.

The new Unisys solutions can use the Unisys 3D Blueprinting services methodology, which provides clients greater visibility into the relationships between the business and the technology that supports it. By providing traceability among business strategy, business processes, applications and IT infrastructure, the methodology enables clients to anticipate the effect of changes before they make them.

New Servers Increase Client Options for Deploying Cost-Efficient Solutions

The new Unisys blade and mid-range servers announced today extend the Unisys server portfolio, expanding clients’ choice of high-performance platforms for solutions in real-time environments. The servers are designed specifically to reduce server sprawl, provide maximum efficiency in use of computing resources, and reduce power consumption and associated costs.

With flexible I/O configuration options and advanced local and remote management interfaces, the new ES5000 family of blade servers is ideal for real-time infrastructures. It enables computing resources to be added on demand, cutting down on idle resources in the data center and delivering increased power and cost efficiency. Base one-blade configurations with hard drive and LAN/SAN connectivity switch are priced from $17,500.

Underscoring its commitment to deliver the latest in virtualization, Unisys has also enhanced its ES3000 family of mid-range servers with a new model and three upgrades. The new model, ES3215L, is a two-socket quad- core server using Intel Xeon processor technology. Unisys has also upgraded the existing ES3220, ES3220L and ES3420L servers to the latest quad core Intel Xeon processors with Intel Virtualization Technology, which optimizes performance in a virtualized environment. Base configurations of model ES3215L with hard drive are priced from $3,000.

The ES5000 blade servers are scheduled for availability in March. The new ES3000 models are available immediately.

Unisys also plans to expand its ES7000 family of high-end enterprise servers with a quad core eight-processor server in the second quarter of 2008. In the latter part of the year, Unisys plans to deliver its next generation of highly scalable ES7000 servers, the first development to leverage the Unisys/NEC strategic alliance for server design and manufacture.

For further information on Unisys real-time infrastructure solutions, click on the following link: http://www.unisys.com/tech/RTI.