Unisys Expands Real-Time Infrastructure Solutions, Freeing CIOs to Spend Less and Deliver More

Extending virtualisation throughout IT infrastructure, new solutions ease data centre management, saving money and improving energy efficiency

SYDNEY, May 29, 2008 – Building on its new solutions and services-led technology strategy announced in February, Unisys has expanded its family of real-time infrastructure solutions. These new solutions and services embody Unisys “less is more” approach to IT infrastructure, freeing IT organisations to deploy a simplified, more easily managed IT infrastructure that allows them to spend less time on routine management activities and more on strategic initiatives that advance the business.

The expansion includes new services to facilitate virtualisation in real-time infrastructure; virtualised desktop, mailbox and storage solutions; and a new server that extends clients’ options for enterprise computing. The solutions announced today are designed to help enterprise clients significantly enhance the productivity of their information technology (IT) investments, gaining an improvement of up to 40 percent in their total infrastructure costs when they have fully implemented a real-time enterprise.

As clients evolve their organisations into real-time enterprises by utilising Unisys 3D Blueprinting approach – which provides greater visibility into the relationships between the business and the IT that supports it – they can achieve a state where business requirements directly drive IT use.

“Increasingly, enterprises are frustrated by the escalating cost and complexity of their IT infrastructures,” said Geoff Dickson, vice president, Systems and Technology, Unisys Asia Pacific. “Unisys addresses this challenge by providing a rich set of technology-superior solutions and services, based on best-of-breed technologies, which we can deliver directly to clients or as an outsourcing provider. These solutions liberate clients from IT productivity roadblocks and reduce costs while delivering a more efficient, reliable, secure and environmentally friendly IT infrastructure. By doing so, we free clients to invest their IT dollars in innovating for the future and growing their business.”

New Services for Virtualisation in a Real-Time Infrastructure

Virtualisation is too critical to the success of a real-time infrastructure to be undertaken as a series of random initiatives. IT executives can maximise operational benefits, cost savings and return on IT investments by taking a planned approach to virtualisation as a means to transform the infrastructure. Two new Unisys services enable that approach, drawing on Unisys 3D Blueprinting services approach, which provides traceability among business strategy, business processes, applications and IT infrastructure.

Unisys 3D Blueprinting for Virtualisation service helps clients to create a comprehensive virtualisation plan that accounts for a full range of business and IT requirements. They can define their objectives for virtualisation, map business goals and related IT objectives, and establish the implementation strategy. The service is designed to accelerate the rate of infrastructure transformation and maximise return on investment in virtualisation.

Unisys Virtualisation Operational Readiness Assessment service gives clients a detailed understanding of the full operational impact of virtualisation in advance. Using a workshop approach, clients can determine how they must change business and IT processes for virtualisation, identify gaps, prioritise areas for change and assess technology, people and process issues that can impact implementation.

Later in 2008, Unisys intends to augment its services for deployment and management of real-time infrastructure with two services: an “acceleration service” that enables faster implementation of Unisys uAdapt™ repurposing software to support multiple test and development projects, and a recovery readiness assessment service, which makes operational recommendations for a recovery and backup infrastructure and provides a prioritised action plan for a real-time infrastructure.

Taking Virtualisation beyond the Data Center and onto the Desktop

Two new Unisys solutions enable clients to virtualise key applications and functional deployments in their Microsoft environment while making them an integral part of the real-time infrastructure, enhancing productivity and resource efficiency.

The new Unisys Consolidated Desktop Solution (CDS) addresses the growing cost and complexity of managing Windows desktop environments. Unisys studies show the CDS solution can reduce total cost of ownership for desktop environments by more than 30 percent compared to traditional PC deployments. The Unisys CDS solution provides a simplified environment that can increase data and equipment security and make it easier to manage compliance with security standards.

Unisys CDS consolidates, virtualises and hosts desktop infrastructures onto centralised servers and storage systems. The CDS solution allows organisations to replace fully configured desktop PCs with thin-client alternatives which are less expensive, easier to manage and maintain, and more secure. The solution offers host pooling for more efficient use of server resources, improved performance and reduced power consumption.

The Unisys CDS solution uses Microsoft Windows and other familiar Microsoft suites that are standard in the enterprise desktop environment. This permits continuity of skills for existing users, reducing implementation time and streamlining ongoing management. In addition, because the solution can, optionally, remove local resources such as storage from PCs, it can improve data security while still affording authorised users access to data and applications residing anywhere on the corporate network or the Internet.

“With the new Unisys Consolidated Desktop Solution, Unisys and Microsoft are providing enterprise customers with another flexible way to integrate Windows Vista into a dynamic real-time infrastructure," said Scott Woodgate, director, Windows Product Management, Microsoft Corp. "Combining Unisys services with Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise Centralised Desktop, this solution helps clients use their IT resources more efficiently, maintain centralised data access, streamline operations and improve business continuity."

Distributed, underutilised e-mail environments increasingly pose a challenge for enterprise clients seeking to reduce the IT footprint and reduce operational costs. The new Unisys Consolidated Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 addresses that challenge. This solution, which can be deployed on Unisys and other enterprise servers, uses consolidation technologies to enable a higher density of mailboxes per server. This approach leads to improved system utilisation with greater manageability, lower power usage and reduced operating expenses.

In a deployment for a large bank in Central Europe, this solution enabled 62 servers handling more than 30,000 mailbox accounts to be reduced to two Unisys ES7000 Enterprise Servers accommodating 42,000 mailbox users, with improved provisions for disaster recovery. This reduced the bank’s infrastructure costs, increased workers’ capability to meet customer needs, enhanced security and improved its position for future growth.

Storage Virtualisation Enhances Data Access across the Enterprise

The new Unisys Storage Virtualisation solutions announced today help clients to reduce the costs of maintaining multiple storage systems connected to siloed server environments – and having to pay the price of idle capacity and higher equipment footprint, power consumption and ownership costs. The Unisys solution increases the efficiency of storage resources, availability of information and utilisation of existing storage facilities.

Unisys Storage Virtualisation solutions enable clients to design and implement a central storage system comprising a reduced number of storage arrays, which can be accessed as virtual resources by components of an enterprise-wide real-time infrastructure. Servers can view heterogeneous storage arrays as a common pool of resources, allocating storage to any application dynamically whenever necessary. The entire storage system can be managed through a single interface to all arrays.

The Storage Virtualisation solutions use Unisys assessment, implementation, management and support services, complemented by best-in-class storage virtualisation technology from select Unisys partners.

New Server Boosts Options for Virtualisation and Energy Efficiency

Adding a new dimension in power to its high-end Unisys ES7000 Enterprise Server family, Unisys today announced the ES7000 Model 7405R. This new model expands clients’ options for hosting virtualised applications in a real-time infrastructure. Supporting up to eight Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, a single model 7405R server can host a whole suite of virtualised applications. The system features new Rapid Virtualisation Indexing technology, which improves memory management for virtual machines and optimises performance. The new model also provides efficient power supply design, which minimises energy loss, and improved cooling capabilities, which lower power consumption and reduce operational costs.

In a comparative benchmark against a two-socket quad-core commodity server – the kind of small system on which virtualisation deployments are typically done today – the Model 7405R yielded significantly better performance on virtualised workloads. The system supported 128 virtual machines, versus 12 on the other system, at a 66 percent lower cost per virtual machine. In addition, the Model 7405R reduced the three-year total cost of ownership by 66 percent and provided a 72 percent reduction in power and cooling costs.

The ES7000 Model 7405R supports multiple operating environments, including Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and 2003 Datacentre, Enterprise and Standard Editions; Microsoft Virtual Server; Red Hat Enterprise Linux; SUSE Linux Enterprise Server; and Sun Microsystems Solaris 10.

For further information on Unisys real-time infrastructure solutions, click on the following link: http://www.unisys.com/products/solutions__infrastructure/index.htm

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.au.

Contact

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