Unisys Corporation today announced the latest in a series of aggressive moves to expand the full spectrum of secure cloud computing options available to enterprise CIOs.

The company announced Unisys Secure Private Cloud Solution, an innovative solution for organizations to realize the operational and economic benefits of cloud computing in their internal data centers. Unisys also announced significant enhancements – including a disaster recovery service – to Unisys Secure Cloud Solution, the company’s managed public cloud offering. Unisys is showcasing new and forthcoming solutions at the SYS-CON Cloud Computing Conference & Expo here.

“Unisys is committed to giving clients highly flexible computing services that enable them to move more of their business workload to the cloud,” said Rich Marcello, president, Unisys Technology, Consulting and Integration Solutions. “We have found that some organizations prefer a private cloud solution for mission-critical applications that use sensitive data so they can retain greater control over their own and their customers’ information. Unisys meets that need with the Secure Private Cloud Solution.”

Recent Unisys research has consistently shown that security concerns are the leading cause of enterprise and individual users’ hesitancy in adopting cloud computing. The most recent findings of the Unisys Security Index, a bi-annual global study of consumer opinion on security-related issues, showed that a significant percentage of respondents worldwide were uncomfortable about having their personal data controlled by a third party without assurance that the data could be kept secure.

“Unisys cloud computing strategy is based on providing industrial-strength security and data protection,” said Marcello. “Like our public cloud offering, Unisys Secure Private Cloud Solution goes a long way toward allaying the security concerns of enterprises and their customers. Unisys Secure Private Cloud Solution presents CIOs with a way to realize the full operational and economic advantages of public cloud computing on their own terms, in their own data centers, with extra measures of security for their organizations’ and their customers’ sensitive information.”

Automation and Consulting Services Make Secure Private Cloud Solution Easy to Deploy, Operate and Use

Unisys Secure Private Cloud Solution, scheduled for availability in December 2009, leverages the technology and expertise behind Unisys Secure Cloud Solution. Unisys Secure Private Cloud Solution enables clients to reduce IT costs through server and storage virtualization; remove troublesome IT bottlenecks through automated operations and immediate, as-needed self-service provisioning of resources; and align the supply of IT resources to fluctuating business demand.

For ease of deployment, this pre-loaded, ready-to-go solution allows a full range of virtualization, including scale-up and scale-out, and supports physical as well as virtual machines. Clients can typically run existing Microsoft Windows applications without alteration, reducing migration costs and realizing the business benefits of cloud deployment more quickly.

Extreme automation makes Unisys Secure Private Cloud Solution easy to operate and manage. The solution enables automated virtual provisioning and repurposing of IT resources on the fly and provides automated resource tracking to facilitate allocation of IT usage costs to specific groups.

Clients can either monitor the infrastructure themselves or have Unisys do it through the Unisys Converged Remote Infrastructure Management Solution. Announced in March 2009, that solution correlates events across all managed infrastructure segments to orchestrate pre-emptive action against potential IT faults. Unisys also plans to include enhanced capabilities in this solution, such as live chats to resolve service issues more quickly at a lower operational cost.

Provisioning through a self-service portal makes Unisys Secure Private Cloud Solution easy to use. From anywhere on the network, at any time, users can select the configuration and length of time needed to address a specific IT resource requirement and typically move existing applications to a Unisys cloud without modification.

This self-service capability can reduce provisioning time from days to minutes. For example, deploying the technology that underpins Unisys Secure Private Cloud Solution for its engineering development and testing lab, Unisys cut virtual server provisioning time from 10 days to five minutes while avoiding the cost of hiring extra staff to manage the lab.

Organizations using Unisys Secure Private Cloud Solution can optionally choose to implement Unisys Stealth solution for additional data protection. Using patent-pending data protection technology, the Stealth solution cloaks data from detection as it moves through the network. As a result, different departments and applications in a multi-tenant environment can share the same IT infrastructure without fear of compromising the security of their data moving across the corporate network.

To make it easier for users to decide on and deploy Unisys Secure Private Cloud Solution, Unisys has augmented its portfolio of Cloud Transformation Services with Current State Assessment, Design and Planning, Installation and Configuration, Implementation and Application Migration Services specifically for private cloud deployment. The Cloud Transformation Services are delivered by a workforce of 3,000 Unisys consultants worldwide.

Disaster Recovery, Additional Services Boost Unisys Public Cloud Capabilities

“To give clients wider choice in cloud services, Unisys continues to enhance the capabilities of the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution,” said Marcello. “We are enriching a public cloud environment that already offers industrial-strength security so enterprise clients and their customers can have greater confidence that their sensitive business and personal information is protected in the cloud.”

Unisys has added Secure Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) to the Secure Cloud Solution. This new service provides comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery services on a subscription basis, typically lowering clients’ cost of entry compared to in-house implementation. The service also makes it easier for clients to comply with laws and standards requiring storage and recovery of sensitive business data and applications.

With the DRaaS service, the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution is configured as a disaster recovery backup facility, with copies of critical applications and data stored in Unisys data centers worldwide. The automated provisioning, replication and failover capabilities of the Secure Cloud Solution permit applications to be recovered within minutes.

Unisys has also added new capabilities to key “as a service” offerings delivered through the Secure Cloud Solution:

• At the end of November 2009, Unisys plans to support Microsoft stacks, including IIS Web Server, .NET Application Server and SQL Server, along with custom stacks such as IBM Websphere and Oracle, in Unisys Secure Platform as a Service (PaaS). This service makes it easier for clients to move their applications to the cloud without changes; and
• Unisys Secure Virtual Office as a Service (VOaaS), which provides access to standard office suites through hosted desktop services, will support qualified client-supplied devices, such as PCs used as thin clients. This addition enables IT organizations to give workers access to applications and support through the technologies they want to use so they can stay continually productive no matter where they are.

For further information on Unisys Secure Private Cloud Solution, click on the following link: http://unisys.com/unisys/theme/index.jsp?id=16000032&pid=1036300010000010000