2010: The Year of the Application
By Bill Maclean, Vice President, ClearPath Programs, Unisys TCIS

2010 is a year for turning the corner – whether it’s growing your current business, expanding customer services, moving into new markets, or whatever “forward motion” means to your particular organization.

Unisys has turned a corner – and we in the ClearPath business unit see great opportunities for growth. We won’t be satisfied with maintaining the status quo. We want to grow our market share and bring new ClearPath customers on board to join our loyal customer base. I believe we are well positioned to achieve this goal because of investments we’ve made over the last 18-24 months. And, these same investments are available to help you take your organization – and ClearPath applications – in new directions.

In today’s hyper-competitive world, it’s really all about applications. Applications that leverage contemporary technology; that are accessible via the Web and from mobile devices; that can be easily changed to fit business requirements; that can be reused as services; and that still retain all the mission-critical attributes that never go out of style – security, scalability, stability, recoverability, and more.

The ClearPath software environment has never been more robust – or offered so many immediately usable technologies that are designed to help your organization get new and enhanced applications up and running quickly. Consider the following:

Smartphones are beginning to replace laptops as the way to work while people are on the go – and ClearPath is ready with:

• The ClearPath ePortal Specialty Engine, which now offers an easy way to enable access to ClearPath applications from an Apple® iPhone® or Apple® iPod Touch®, with more mobile device support to come
• Updates to environmental software to support the unique characteristics of mobile users, such as frequent sign-ons and sign-offs
• New security facilities that support mobile users while protecting your mainframe environment and data

Time to market is everything, and more applications are assembled, rather than built from scratch – and ClearPath is ready with:

• Application Advisory Services to help you assess your enterprise portfolio and determine suitable modernization and outsourcing strategies, priorities, roadmaps, and implementation plans
• ClearPath OS 2200 JProcessor and ClearPath MCP JProcessor Specialty Engines that provide a secure environment for Java applications running under the control of the OS 2200 or MCP operating system
• ClearPath Database Extensions for PHP, a popular Open Source web-scripting language, which allow web applications to interact with DMSII databases
• ClearPath OS 2200 and ClearPath MCP IDE for Eclipse™ tools, which boost programmer productivity and make it easier for any developer to work on ClearPath applications
• The ability to use Open Source applications in the ClearPath environment, such as the Drupal Open Source content management system, to help you manage information using native ClearPath databases
  
• Agile Business Suite, which offers an industry-leading Model-Driven Development capability designed to support mission-critical applications
  
• Business Information Server (BIS) that enables rapid application development for major business applications

Unisys is taking advantage of these advances, as well. For example, some of the largest Telcos in the world run Unisys voice messaging solutions on ClearPath servers – and the flexibility and rich features of these applications are winning new customers for Unisys. And by the way, this application has been migrated to Agile Business Suite, our contemporary Microsoft® Visual Studio® based development platform, to support its long-term growth.

We expect that our investments in opening up the ClearPath environment and making mobile device integration easy will continue to fuel further growth.

Finally, our focus on supporting enterprise-class open technology creates significant opportunities for growth. It enables development using Open Source tools and provides the foundation for support of Open Source applications. ClearPath customers who require a secure, reliable, scalable environment for their Open Source applications may well elect to leverage ClearPath Servers to get them there.

Today, ClearPath is providing support for where the world is going, not just where it is today. The “Year of the Application” is off to a great start, and I hope that your organization will seize this opportunity to make ClearPath applications even more valuable to your business.