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Unisys Collaborates with CIOs to Identify and Solve Top Seven Barriers to IT Modernisation


Unisys enhances application services portfolio to reduce the costs, risks, and time factors involved in modernising IT environments to better support changing business needs

SYDNEY, April 24, 2008 – Unisys has announced that as a result of the conclusion of a year-long study with 50 enterprise CIOs, the company has bolstered two key offerings in its Application Services portfolio for organisations seeking to modernise their information technology (IT) infrastructures.

 

According to the findings, there are seven key obstacles commonly faced by organisations when attempting to modernise legacy IT systems and applications using current leading-edge tools. Unisys has released a white paper discussing the barriers and strategies for overcoming each barrier through their web site.

 

To overcome these barriers, Unisys has tapped its deep services experience supporting, managing and renovating client’s application portfolios. These services are aimed at helping Unisys clients modernise their IT processes, applications and technology while minimising operational risk and reducing total cost of application ownership by between 10 per cent and 40 per cent. Successful IT modernisation enables organisations to accelerate business innovation and realise the full business potential of their IT investments.

 

The Seven Barriers

 

In 2007, Unisys met with CIOs and IT executives from 50 private, public and government institutions. The discussions revealed seven key challenges facing IT executives in getting modernisation projects off the ground:

  • Cost – Despite the potential cost savings of modernising their information technology, organisations struggle to find the upfront funds to pay for modernisation projects.
  • Risk – Organisations face significant risks to their business while making changes to core, mission-critical business applications.
  • Inertia – For many IT executives today, there is no clear personal reward for modernisation especially when everything is working fine.
  • Time – Modernisation projects are complex and require considerable planning and validation time which means that it takes more time to realise the benefit.
  • Information – There are many vendors promoting many products and services – and little independent information to help organisations make the smart investment for their particular environments.
  • Balance – With pressing business and IT maintenance issues always front and centre, modernisation projects quickly fall to the bottom of the priority list.
  • Quality of Service – Organisations are wary of changes made with new technologies that could compromise service and the performance of existing systems.

Despite these barriers, organisations also recognise the business imperative of proactively upgrading and evolving their IT infrastructure and applications to take advantage of the speed, flexibility, and cost advantages of modern technologies such as open source software and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

 

Unisys portfolio of Application Services provides organisations with a full lifecycle of services and support to ensure a successful IT modernisation project. These services include application development, enhancement, transformation, migration, hosting, support, maintenance, and upfront advisory services. Global delivery and Software as a Service (SaaS) are options client’s can select to address particular cost, skills and operational challenges.

 

Unisys Application Portfolio Management and Knowledge-based Management Services

 

To help clients overcome common barriers faced during IT modernisation projects, Unisys recently announced its Application Portfolio Management (APM) and Knowledge-Based Management (KBM) services.

 

The Unisys APM service helps organisations build a common understanding of their current software assets, including the value of these assets to the organisation, areas of risk, and business and technology interdependencies. By helping organisations tie their software applications to business needs, the service enables organisations to determine which applications are core to the business, where overlaps exist, and what is obsolete. This information is needed to help them make sound, business-driven decisions about how modernisation should be approached for a given organisation. It alleviates many of the financial and technical fears associated with modernisation, and enables Unisys to predict and endorse the reduction in application TCO.

 

After APM, Unisys helps clients to begin the actual modernisation process. The KBM service helps organisations expose and identify ways, at a micro level, to transform existing functionality for reuse during modernisation projects. The Unisys KBM service minimises the business risk associated with a complete IT overall at once by allowing organisations to focus initial efforts on a subset of applications based on internal priorities. For example, KBM can be applied to high-value, core business applications or those with the highest maintenance cost or software developed using outdated technology.

 

The APM and KBM services are based on the company’s considerable experience successfully assisting Financial Services, Public Sector, Communications and Transportation customers.

 

“The Application Services we’re highlighting today are a natural extension of the experience and success we’ve had with our enterprise clients,” said Rob Dewar, managing partner, Application Services, Unisys Asia Pacific. “After listening to our customers define what they believe are the common barriers to modernisation, and then pulling from our proven best practices, we feel that our application modernisation suite creates a new direction where the relationships between organisational strategy, operations, processes, and applications are embedded and traceable.”

 

Unisys Application Modernisation Services enables organisations to:

  • Increase agility to support new business goals and processes
  • Ensure uninterrupted operations by allowing old and new applications to coexist during an evolutionary transition period
  • Provide cost reduction for application operations, maintenance and enhancement
  • Reduce the risk associated with not updating technology and the shrinking pool of specialised technical skills
  • Discover and preserve intellectual property hidden in existing applications and enable its reuse
  • More effectively leverage next-generation technologies, like SOA and Model-Driven Architecture (MDA)

About Unisys

 

Unisys is a worldwide information technology services and solutions company. We provide consulting, systems integration, outsourcing and infrastructure services, combined with powerful enterprise server technology. We specialise in helping clients use information to create efficient, secure business operations that allow them to achieve their business goals. Our consultants and industry experts work with clients to understand their business challenges and create greater visibility into critical linkages throughout their operations. For more information, visit www.unisys.com.

 

Contacts

 

Pip Sheardown, Unisys, 0406 992 816
phillipa.sheardown@au.unisys.com