Unisys has announced the imminent arrival of its new ClearPath HMP IX6800 enterprise server, improving the high-end performance of the ClearPath HMP IX family by 60 percent over previous models and dropping the price/performance ratio.
ClearPath revenue grew 10 percent last year, and over $3 billion in ClearPath servers have been sold since the beginning of 1997. The strong economy and the shift towards Internet-driven electronic business are also causing many ClearPath customers to upgrade their systems to support record levels of business transactions. Solutions-oriented sales are also very strong.
"Internationally, 17 percent of our ClearPath business last year came from sales to new customers," says Mark Patterson, ClearPath business initiative manager at Unisys SA. "We are seeing especially strong demand for ClearPath based solutions in the banking, insurance and voice messaging markets.
Unisys is seeing strong interest in the new ClearPath HMP IX6800 servers from UBS, one of the world`s largest banks; The Nasdaq Stock Market, the fastest growing U.S. stock market and the world`s first and largest electronic market; Amadeus, one of the world`s largest central airline reservation systems; and other clients worldwide. Amadeus has been awaiting this announcement and will make use of the ClearPath HMP IX6800 technology as soon as it is available.
Solid interest in ClearPath is also evident in South Africa. "We have seen very good acceptance of ClearPath in the 2200 base locally," says Patterson. "Significant organisations such as Boland PKS and NBS have already implemented ClearPath solutions and are reaping the benefits of the architecture".
Many companies are today discovering that conducting business on the Internet with Web-based electronic commerce is causing a profound increase in the number of transactions handled by their existing business information systems. The growth in transaction rates has led to increasing demand for enterprise servers, such as Unisys ClearPath, that offer mission-critical, mainframe-class attributes: scalability, availability, manageability, interoperability and support for high transaction volumes and large databases, among other key capabilities. According to the industry research firm IDC, Unisys ClearPath marketshare has grown over the past two years.
An independent IDC study demonstrated that Unisys ClearPath enterprise servers are superior to other servers for large-scale, I/O (input/output) intensive on-line transaction processing (OLTP) applications. Airlines, banks, and other organisations that handle massive amounts of critical information 24 hours a day typically run such applications, which are gaining renewed prominence as enterprises increasingly must implement secure and reliable electronic business services requiring high-performance, high-availability servers.
The study, published in an IDC Bulletin, drew on other data to suggest that staffing costs to support a Unisys ClearPath system in an OLTP application are significantly lower than those required by the competition for the same application.
The ClearPath HMP IX6800 follows its predecessors in the use of ever-more efficient, compact and flexible CMOS semiconductor technology. The IX6800 uses one chip to handle the work that once took 144 chips. Customers are also now able to link up to four Intel-based multiprocessor servers into the Windows NT or UnixWare module of their ClearPath HMP IX6800 servers. The ClearPath HMP IX6800 will be available in the third quarter of this year.
Unisys ClearPath enterprise servers
Unisys ClearPath enterprise servers feature the unique Unisys Heterogeneous Multiprocessing (HMP) architecture, which enables customers to run mainframe-class applications and databases and those based on Windows NT or UnixWare side-by-side in the same server. The Unisys ClearPath family of servers continues to be one of the most successful products Unisys has ever released. For more information on the ClearPath HMP IX6800 or the ClearPath family of servers, see the ClearPath Web page at http://www.unisys.com/marketplace/clearpath.
Share
Unisys
Unisys is more than 33,000 employees helping customers in 100 countries apply information technology to solve their business problems. Unisys solutions are based on a broad portfolio of global information services including electronic business, systems integration including custom and "repeatable" application solutions, outsourcing, Microsoft Windows NT services, network services, and multivendor maintenance and support, coupled with enterprise-class servers and associated middleware, software and storage. Repeatable solutions are focused on key vertical markets including financial services, transportation, telecommunications, government, publishing, and other commercial markets. The company is headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, in the Greater Philadelphia area. For more information on the company, access the Unisys home page on the World Wide Web at http://www.unisys.com. Investor information can be found at http://www.unisys.com/investor.
Editorial contacts