Unisys Corporation is launching solutions and services to expand customers' options for cloud computing. The new offerings are intended to help organizations move enterprise application workloads securely to tailored cloud environments with greater confidence in maintaining the integrity of critical information. Unisys' cloud strategy takes a comprehensive approach to security in order to overcome CIOs' concerns about protection of data in the cloud, which Unisys says has been cited by organizations and industry analysts as the top impediment to adopting cloud computing for business needs.
During a recent Unisys webinar on protecting data in the cloud attended by more than 100 major firms and government agencies, Unisys conducted a quick poll asking: "What is your greatest concern about moving workloads to the cloud?" Ninety people responded and of those, 72% cited security concerns, while other considerations ranked significantly lower on the scale of urgency. Among other concerns, 34% of respondents selected Integration issues; 14% cited total cost of operations; and only 8% cited "none of the above."
The Unisys cloud computing strategy enables clients to choose the type of data center computing services that best meet their business objectives, from self-managed, automated IT infrastructures to Unisys-managed cloud services. Organizations can create a private cloud within their data centers, a public cloud through secure Unisys-managed cloud solutions, or a hybrid cloud solution combining the best of both private and Unisys-managed cloud services.
The four offerings include the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution, Cloud Transformation Services, a cloud-in-a-box solution, and a hybrid cloud solution.
Central to the Unisys Secure Cloud is Unisys Stealth security solution, a data protection technology initially designed for government applications and now available to commercial clients. The Unisys Stealth technology cloaks data through multiple levels of authentication and encryption, bit-splitting data into multiple packets so it moves invisibly across networks and protects data in the Unisys secure cloud.
"One of the biggest fears with sensitive data is that you don't want Customer A getting a hold of your data when you actually are Customer B, or vice versa, and so the best way to guarantee that does not happen is to cloak the data-make it largely incomprehensible to anyone other than someone who has the encryption key and the bit splitting key," Rich Marcello, president, Unisys Systems and Technology, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "Putting those two things together is a set of technologies that we developed for the federal government, that we believe-and so does the federal government-has never, ever been broken and so it maps very well to what customers are looking for in terms of a robust security solution."
Unisys is making the first two offerings of its cloud strategy available this month.
- Unisys Secure Cloud Solution, with availability planned for July 31, is a managed cloud service providing comprehensive data security for multi-tenant environments, in which clients share a common IT infrastructure. The solution uses Stealth technology, so enterprise clients can move existing business applications-including those with secure or sensitive data, such as human resources, financial, and healthcare information-into a managed, shared cloud service.
Unisys Secure Cloud Solution provides a global platform for delivering highly secure, managed IT infrastructure and application services available "as a service" through the cloud. The new services, also available July 31, include Secure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), for provisioning physical and virtual servers that both scale out and scale up; Secure Platform as a Service (PaaS), which provides a Java software stack-with .NET support planned-to make it easier for clients to move their applications to the cloud without making changes; My Secure Application as a Service (AaaS), for automatic provisioning of IT resources to support applications with multi-tier architectures; and Secure Software as a Service (SaaS), which provides access to hosted applications.
- A second offering, Cloud Transformation Services, is a portfolio of advisory and implementation services that help clients assess potential cloud computing options and determine which option best suits their needs or financial objectives. These services, again with availability planned for July 31, allow users to modernize their IT and application environments and enhance productivity while lowering costs and safeguarding their operations.
The Unisys Cloud Transformation Services comprise three suites of services: Cloud Advisory Services, which guide clients on the strategic implications that cloud computing may have for the business and help clients determine if cloud computing-whether a private cloud, a Unisys-managed secure cloud or a hybrid cloud-is an effective choice; Cloud Assessment Services, which help clients determine which applications and services are best suited for cloud computing; and Cloud Migration Services, which help clients deploy applications to either a Unisys-managed secure cloud or a client-managed internal cloud, or both.
Unisys intends to launch additional solutions that give clients enhanced options in implementing cloud services.
- The third part of the strategy, which Unisys calls its "cloud-in-a-box" solution is a comprehensive IT infrastructure package, enabling quick and cost-effective implementation of a private cloud. This solution will include virtualization capabilities, automation of ITIL best practices for service management, and Unisys Converged Remote Infrastructure Management capabilities, with Unisys Stealth solution as an option for extreme security. "The basic idea there is that we are going to take everything we have learned in terms of standing up our own cloud and prepackage that into a set of services, software and hardware," states Marcello.
- The fourth part of the strategy is a hybrid cloud offering that provides the best of managed and dedicated services by combining public and private cloud capabilities.
"We think by having all four pieces that you really have an extremely comprehensive cloud strategy," notes Marcello. Unisys has about 800 consultants who can help with cloud transformation services and whether it leads to an internal cloud or a Unisys Secure Cloud implementation does not matter, contends Marcello. "We are trying to figure out what the best thing to do is for the client. That is much different than a lot of the guys who only have their own cloud. They're going to be out pushing their cloud, not really thinking though the problem holistically." For more information, go here.