Unisys

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Unisys Corporation (NYSE: [UIS]), based in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, is a global provider of information technology services and solutions.

History

Unisys was formed in September 1986 through the merger of the mainframe corporations Sperry and Burroughs, with Burroughs buying Sperry for $4.8 billion. The name was chosen after an internal competition. The merger was the largest in the computer industry at the time and made Unisys the second largest computer company, with annual revenue of $10.5 billion.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

Important events in the company's history include the development of the 2200 series in 1986, including the UNISYS 2200/500 CMOS mainframe, and the Micro A in 1989, the first desktop mainframe.

In 1988 the company acquired Convergent Technologies, and their innovative CTOS.

In March 2006, Unisys sold its Japanese distributor stake for $374 million. The sale will help fund 3,600 previously announced employee layoffs. This will account for about 10% of the current Unisys employee workforce.

Products, services, and customers

Paralleling larger trends in the U.S. information technology industry, an increasing amount of Unisys' revenue comes from services rather than equipment sales. In 2006, the ratio was 83% for services, up from 65% in 1997.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

Unisys clients have included Washington Mutual, the New York Clearinghouse, Lufthansa Systems, Lloyds TSB, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, Nextel, and Telefonica of Spain.

Unisys systems are used for many industrial and government purposes, including banking, check processing, income tax processing, airline passenger reservations, biometric identification, and shipping port management. Unisys operates the world's largest RFID network for the U.S. military, tracking 9 million containers yearly to 1,500 nodes in 25 countries. It also created the universal identification card for citizens of South Africa.

The company engages in consulting, one-time contract jobs, and contracts for ongoing outsourced IT services. Services include building and integrating hardware and software systems, providing ongoing hosting and management of data, planning operational processes and changes, and providing security.

Its equipment line includes the ES7000 server family, which uses Intel processors such as Xeon or Itanium chips. The servers run Microsoft's Windows Server 2003, or Open source Linux operating systems from Novell or Red Hat.

The company's mainframe line, Clearpath, is capable of running, not only mainframe software, but both the Java platform and the JBoss Java EE Application Server concurrently. The Clearpath system is available in either a UNISYS 2200-based system (Sperry) or an MCP-based system (Burroughs).

Controversies

Unisys created a controversy in 1994 by enforcing its patent on the LZW data compression algorithm, which is used in the common GIF image file format. For a more complete discussion of this issue see GIF#Unisys and LZW patent enforcement.

Unisys was the target of "Operation Ill Wind", a major corruption investigation in the mid-to-late-1980s. A number of employees were imprisoned as a result.

In 2005, there was further trouble for the company related to consulting work it was doing for the U.S. government. In October, federal auditors announced that the company had overbilled on the 1-3 billion dollar contract for almost 171,000 hours of labor and overtime. Unisys denied wrongdoing.

Community and environment

Unisys was named the industry leader for corporate sustainability (including environmental, social, financial, human resources, and corporate governance factors[link]) in the Computer Services & Internet industry.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

Unisys has a 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign for its policies regarding LGBT employees.[link]

References