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Unisys

Unisys Corporation (), headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania|Blue Bell,"4th Quarter 2006." Unisys. Retrieved on August 24, 2009."Blue Bell CDP, Pennsylvania." U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved on August 24, 2009. Whitpain Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania|Whitpain Township,"Whitpain township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania." U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved on August 24, 2009. Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware,Company Information: UNISYS CORP is a global provider of information technology services and programs.

History

Unisys was formed in September 1986 through the merger of the Mainframe computer|mainframe corporations Sperry Corporation|Sperry and Burroughs Corporation|Burroughs, with Burroughs buying Sperry for .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 .5 billion About Unisys | History. At the time of the merger, Unisys had approximately 120,000 employees. In addition to hardware, both Burroughs and Sperry had a history of working on U.S. government contracts. Unisys continues to provide hardware, software, and services to various government agencies. Soon after the merger, the market for proprietary mainframe-class systems—the mainstream product of Unisys and its competitors such as IBM—began a long-term decline that continues today. In response, Unisys made the strategic decision to shift into information technology (IT) services such as systems integration, outsourcing, and related technical services, while holding onto the profitable revenue stream from maintaining its installed base of proprietary mainframe hardware and applications. Important events in the company's history include the development of the UNIVAC 1100/2200 series|2200 series in 1986, including the UNISYS 2200/500 CMOS mainframe, and the Micro A in 1989, the first desktop mainframe, the UNISYS ES7000 servers in 2000, and the 3DVE|Unisys blueprinting method of visualizing business rules and workflow in 2004. In 1988 the company acquired Convergent Technologies (Unisys)|Convergent Technologies, makers of Convergent Technologies Operating System|CTOS. In March 2006, Unisys sold its Japanese distributor stake for 4 million. The sale was intended to help fund 3,600 previously announced employee layoffs, accounting for about 10% of the Unisys employee workforce at that time. 10/07/2008 - J. Edward Coleman was appointed CEO and Chairman replacing J. McGrath. On November 11, 2008 the company was removed from the Standard & Poor's 500 index. At the close of trading on November 7 the market capitalization of the company had fallen to 3 million, below the S&P 500 minimum of billion. The company's slogan is:
Unisys. Imagine it. Done.

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 2008, the ratio was 88% for services, up from 65% in 1997.Unisys | Investors | News, Events, Financials, Information Unisys clients are typically large corporations or government agencies, and have included Washington Mutual, the New York Clearinghouse, Dell, Lufthansa Systems, Lloyds TSB, EMC Corporation|EMC, SWIFT, various state governments (for services such as unemployment insurance, licensing, etc.), various branches of the U.S. military, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), numerous airports, the General Services Administration, Transportation Security Administration|U.S. Transportation Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, 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, newspaper content management and shipping port management, as well as providing weather data services.Unisys developed the software for NEXRAD, the original doppler weather radar, and has since provided weather data consisting of radar, satellite, lightning, etc.Unisys Weather 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 IA64|Itanium chips. The servers run Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and other Windows operating systems, and/or Open-source software|Open source Linux operating systems from Novell or Red Hat. The ES7000 is also certified by the Guinness Book of World Records for hosting the largest number of concurrent gamers ever recorded on a single game server.Unisys|Unisys ES7000 Server Powers World-Record-Breaking Gaming Event The company's mainframe line, Clearpath, is capable of running not only mainframe software, but both the Java virtual machine|Java platform and the JBoss Java EE Application Server concurrently. The Clearpath system is available in either a UNIVAC 1100/2200 series#UNISYS 2200 series|UNISYS 2200-based system (Sperry) or an MCP (Burroughs Large Systems)|MCP-based system (Burroughs).

Controversies

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. As part of the settlement, all Unisys employees were required to receive ethics training each year, a practice that continues today. Unisys attracted criticism in 1994 after enforcing its patent on the LZW lossless data compression|data compression algorithm, which is used in the common Graphics Interchange Format|GIF image file format. For a more complete discussion of this issue, see Graphics Interchange Format#Unisys and LZW patent enforcement. In 2003 and 2004, Unisys retained influential lobbyist Jack Abramoff, paying his firm 0,000 for his services in those two years. In January 2006, Abramoff pleaded guilty to five felony counts for various crimes related to his federal lobbying activities, though none of his crimes involved work on behalf of Unisys. Abramoff Scandal Could Cast Pall On Tech Lobby The lobbying activities of Abramoff and his associates are now the subject of a large federal investigation. In October 2005, the Washington Post reported that the company had allegedly overbilled on the to 3 billion Transportation Security Administration contract for almost 171,000 hours of labor and overtime at up to the maximum rate of 1.13 per hour including 24,983 hours not allowed by the contract. Unisys denied wrongdoing.Contractor Accused Of Overbilling U.S In 2007, the Washington Post reported that the FBI was investigating Unisys for alleged cybersecurity lapses under the company's contract with the United States Department of Homeland Security. A number of security lapses supposedly occurred during the contract, including incidents in which data was transmitted to China|Chinese servers.FBI investigates Unisys over U.S. government hack | ITworld Unisys denies all charges and said it has documentation disproving the allegations.Unisys Says Facts, Documentation Contradict Allegations in News Story on DHS In 2008, Joe McGrath stepped down as CEO and was replaced by J. Edward Coleman, former CEO of Gateway, Inc. Unisys announced on June 30, 2008 that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had not selected the company for Phase 2 of procurement for the Information Technology Infrastructure Program.http://philadelphia.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2008/06/30/daily18.html In July Unisys announced its plans to file a formal protest of the TSA decision with the Government Accountability Office (GAO).http://www.washingtontechnology.com/online/1_1/33141-1.html On August 20 the TSA announced it was allowing bidding from all competitors including Unisys and Northrop Grumman, who both filed formal protests with the GAO and protested TSA's decision to the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Dispute Resolution, after not initially being selected.http://www.wtop2.com/?nid=169&sid=1462701 The company completed a one-for-ten reverse stock split in October 2009 http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091028-708055.html

Notes

External links

- Unisys Official Web Site.
- Unisys profile at Yahoo.
- Unisys profile at the Center for Public Integrity. Category:Companies established in 1986 Category:Companies based in Pennsylvania Category:Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Category:Computer companies of the United States Category:UML Partners Category:International information technology consulting firms

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