Unisys Poll Shows Enterprise Users Still Cautious about Moving Mission-Critical Applications to the Cloud

Nearly two-thirds of respondents are most comfortable moving development and pre-production workloads to the cloud first

BLUE BELL, Pa., April 15, 2010 – An online poll recently conducted by Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) shows that enterprise users are ready to move a broad set of workloads to the cloud, although they remain wary of moving their most critical business-application workloads there.

Answering the question “What parts of enterprise workloads would you choose to move to the cloud first?” 46 percent of the 120 respondents said that they would choose to lead with development/test and support workloads. Another 17 percent would move quality assurance and pre-production systems first.

A further 22 percent of respondents identified disaster recovery – a vital but not mission-critical workload – as their prime candidate for deployment in the cloud.

By contrast, 15 percent of respondents said that they would move core production workloads, such as enterprise requirements planning, to the cloud first.

“Even though the poll respondents clearly see the value of cloud computing, the results indicate that they remain reluctant to relinquish control of complex enterprise applications using sensitive information,” said Colin Lacey, vice president, Solutions and Services, Unisys. “Those results echo comments we hear in conversations with clients. While they believe that cloud computing can help them improve cost management and operational efficiency, they are skeptical that the cloud infrastructure used by commodity providers can stand up to the stringent service levels that enterprise workloads require. Plus, they are often concerned about entrusting those applications to a third party without assurance that the data could be kept secure."

The Unisys Secure Cloud Solution, a managed public cloud service and a key component of Unisys cloud computing portfolio, is designed to help clients overcome those concerns about cloud computing while safeguarding operations and lowering IT costs. Unlike commodity cloud offerings, the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution makes it easier for clients to move enterprise-class applications to the cloud without changing them. A number of innovations underpin this enterprise-readiness:

• Unisys Stealth solution, a patent-pending data protection technology, enables different departments and applications in a multi-tenant environment to share the same IT infrastructure without fear of compromising the security of their data moving across the corporate network. Eliminating the need for application modifications makes it easier to move secure workloads to the Unisys Secure Cloud much sooner, with much lower migration costs;
• Enterprise-ready cloud architecture designed explicitly to address the requirements of enterprise application workloads. It can support both physical and virtual server provisioning – frequently required in complex multi-tiered applications – as well as high-performance database requirements; and
• Unisys extensive cloud advisory and implementation services, drawing on decades of experience operating complex enterprise data centers for clients.

For more information on Unisys cloud computing strategy and solutions, click on the following link: http://www.unisys.com/unisys/theme/index.jsp?id=16000032.

###
RELEASE NO.: 0412/8961
Unisys is a registered trademark of Unisys Corporation. All other brands and products referenced herein are acknowledged to be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Contacts

Brian Daly, Unisys, 215-986-2214
brian.daly@unisys.com

Mary McCeney, Weber Shandwick for Unisys, 212-445-8160
mmcceney@webershandwick.com