Unisys Introduces New Messaging and Collaboration Solutions
Unisys Corp. has extended its Microsoft services portfolio to include tailored offerings aligned with Microsoft Online Services, including Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications Online. Unisys Email Management solution, part of its portfolio of IT Outsourcing (ITO) offerings, provides customers with the ability to make faster and more accurate decisions, to have immediate access to information, and to be interconnected despite geographic locations and mobile environments. By adding Microsoft Online Services offerings to its services portfolio, Unisys aims to help end-users remain current with the latest Exchange versions and updates, while efficiently monitoring and managing their IT budgets. Unisys also announced its support for the new Microsoft Online Services partner program.
According to Unisys, the software as a service (SaaS) solutions, called Microsoft Online Services, offer CIOs a tool to free up in-house IT talent to focus on revenue-producing projects, not just infrastructure repair and maintenance. It also gives large companies a way to rationalize their messaging and collaboration costs while deploying the latest Microsoft technologies.
In general, as companies move more and more into services-based business, the lag time or inefficiencies they have in their business, is really dependent on the maturity of their communication and collaboration environment, Brad Arnold, director of outsourcing strategy and portfolio management at Unisys, told 5 Minute Briefing. Automation of processes where people are engaging with each other rather than product and materials in a manufacturing plant require a “very different set of technologies and workflow automation that has to be in place,” he observed. “I think the real importance of these technologies is the automation and reduced cost of operation of services-based businesses where people are interacting rather than parts and materials in a manufacturing market,” he noted.
These offerings allow a client to get to the value of the products and technology faster, said Arnold. “What it signals is a change to the distribution model of software functionality from that which is purchased and rolled out as capital to that which is subscribed to and consumed. And in things like utilities, it becomes a light switch.”
As one of the six lead partners in the program, Unisys currently provides email management services to more than two million Exchange mailboxes worldwide. Engagement within the Microsoft Online Services initiative extends Unisys’ opportunity to offer a cost-effective alternative to traditional hosting solutions by helping to drive additional revenue and add complementary services such as migrations, active directory consulting and service desk support. For more information on Unisys Communication and Collaboration solutions, go here.
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Unisys Offers Modernization Benchmark Service
Unisys has announced the Unisys Modernization Benchmark service to help executives close gaps between their business and IT goals and their estimations of their ability to achieve those goals. The service helps organizations benchmark their current business and IT operations against those of their peers and competitors, spotlighting gaps between their desired state and their readiness to achieve it, enabling them to identify the business and technology initiatives in which they must invest to gain the greatest business advantage in the shortest timeframe.
The benchmark service evolved from a double-blind Unisys study involving 1,200 organizations worldwide, which found that executives are not getting the most from their business initiatives and IT investments, and need new approaches to modernize their business processes, strategic applications and IT infrastructures to address their core business challenges.
“What we essentially started with was trying to get some sense of what modernization looked like in the marketplace and part of that process obviously was defining modernization more precisely,” Michael Sauber, director of worldwide marketing for Unisys, told 5 Minute Briefing. “It was very much of an IT and business balanced view as opposed to strictly an IT-centric view,” Michael Sauber, director of worldwide marketing for Unisys, told 5 Minute Briefing. “We realized that it would be of great value to our clients because we now had not only a view of where the marketplace was in terms of modernization but because the data was collected on an industry by industry basis and geography by geography basis, we had the ability to show clients where they stood against peers and competitors in the marketplace.”
The Unisys Modernization Benchmark service is based on a workshop approach. Unisys consultants help clients measure the organization’s capabilities in six dimensions, including Business Resilience, Collaborative Business, IT as a Business Enabler, Open Business and IT, Green Business, and Business Execution. By comparing the organization’s capabilities and modernization progress in these critical areas to those of peers and competitors, as well as to industry and market averages, executives can re-evaluate the direction of their business and create a framework for where and how operations must evolve to take the organization where it needs to go.
In addition to comparing against peers and competitors, said Sauber, clients are finding it “extremely valuable” to get different view points within their own organization among different constituents. Ultimately, Sauber said, organizations may find a gap between the enterprise’s capability and the marketplace as a whole or their individual industry but they may not want to fill that gap because it may not be an area that is strategically important to them. Or on the other hand, there may be an advantage they have against their peer group that they hadn’t recognized before and they are not leveraging effectively. And lastly, “there may be a gap they should be worried about.” For more information, go here.
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UNITE Best of Conference Series Continues
As part of UNITE's Best of Conference series from last year's Annual Technology Conference, a presentation by Martin Reed of EMC Insurance Companies on Lead Link, an Internet application designed within the ICE system, will be offered on August 19 from 1 to 2 pm ET.
Lead Link allows agents to have a journaling system for tracking prospective clients. It was written in 2006 and is one of the first internet applications developed at EMC which conforms to W3C standards. This includes using CSS to separate content from formatting and JavaScript to separate content from behavior.
The presentation titled “Lead Link - Creating XHTML 1.0 Transitional, Compliant and Accessible Code” will emphasize what needs to be done in ICE to meet compliance and accessibility guidelines. To register for the Webinar, go here.
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History of Unisys Computers Offered in New Book
In their new book, “Unisys Computers: An Introductory History,” George T. Gray and Ronald Q. Smith retrace the steps that led to the creation of Unisys. Unisys was created in 1986 by the merger of Burroughs and Sperry, two companies which also had grown through acquisition prior to the merger. In their book, the authors explore the impact of the technological advancements by the companies encompassed within Unisys and the heritage of innovative design carried on at Unisys.
Gray is deputy chief operations officer at the Georgia Technology Authority. Smith is a distinguished engineer with the Unisys Systems & Technology division in Roseville, MN. For more information, go here.
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