Unisys Corporation, an IT services and consultancy firm, which traces back its origin to multiple technology companies, has undergone changes many times over during its lifetime entering and exiting many businesses in the process. The company, for the past few years, has been concentrating on mission critical computing. In an interaction with FE?s Anand J , the company?s vice president, engineering and supply chain, Bob Supnik , talks about the new disruptive technologies, cyber security and how it is altering its product offerings and services. Edited excerpts from the interview.
Unisys has undergone a massive transformation over the years. It has exited and entered new businesses. What is your focus now?
Currently our focus is on mission critical computing. Failure to respond properly in cases of mission critical projects is not an option. Our system has to run seamlessly. Some of our systems run United States government agencies. What we are seeing now is what used to be an eight hour day, five day week is now a 24 hour, seven day week. This is particularly so in financial services, in public sector transportation etc. They no longer have the option of being a system that could be ever breached with the customer data exposed.
What is the company?s USP in its mission critical computing
offerings?
This is one of our target areas for growth. We have the industry?s most secure systems. We have systems that have the best proven records in the sector. We have to recognise that the biggest problem is not the computer system, but the human beings. Recently many security breaches occurred because users were browsing and inadvertently chancing upon a virus. And you can?t cut out browsing as it is a source of information needed for work. So our system is focused on rapid detection, reaction and concealment. Right now, the global business of cyber war is beginning to rival the illegal business of drugs in terms of dollar value. You are devising a system where you can determine who can see your core information and networks and security is not compromised.
How is adoption of mobile devices changing your business? For instance, how is BYOD forcing you to alter your offerings?
Our customers need to do something more than just being inside the four walls of the system 24/7. This change to mobility is an upsetting thing, changing the way our clients do business. It brings in new challenges, not in terms of communication, but something that involves security. So we create custom mobile solutions that check the mission critical capabilities also for the mobile devices. Another one is cloud. We are providers of cloud technology and also a consumer of the same. The engineering team in Unisys while doing all our development on cloud, also run our internal IT operations on cloud. Again the emphasis is on security. While you can call this a disruptive trend, I see that as part of the disruptive problem.
First we looked into the kind of devices consumers are bringing. These devices are on the verge of taking over from traditional devices like laptops and desktops. The whole model of employees wanting to interact with customers or companies can?t be denied. Every other large company has had 20 years of stability with Windows and mainframe as well as policies and procedures. Now these devices change every six months. So working out policies for devices to be used is complex while cutting them out is difficult as it has your mails, contacts etc. So we need to react rapidly to avoid it turning into a brick in case of an attack. We also need to control the kind of information put on to it. We are also aiming to secure completely the line of communication completely in a way you need by bringing in technologies to these devices.
Which are the other disruptive technologies in your business?
Big data is an area where IT companies are trying to be closer to their customers generating huge piles of data. Big data is another area where you need to go beyond the box. We have a service platform and a technology programme in big data.
Social networking is a huge disrupter. We also use them internally extensively for user experiences to develop practices to get beyond the four walls of the company without affecting the security. We have an internal social networking system with blogs, instant messaging, micro sites and people are really encouraged to use them.
This is the fourth year of Cloud 20/20 competition for college students. Can you mention a few projects that went beyond the research paper stage to ground level implementation?
One of the interesting projects that we have seen is the criminal information system which is state of the art and providing the summary of what is going on to the police. It is being rolled out by the Bihar police department. This helps the department in understanding the criminal history like the vehicle theft registers, murders etc. They have been working on this for two months. This is one of the very good outcomes. Another paper is on improving the power consumption to the optimum level for all the machines while using cloud or another one on how you enable small consumers of cloud to truly leverage the pay as you go model. So there is a focus on local problems specific to the country in these projects.
