Security takes centre stage in the new cloud computing offering from Unisys, which was originally developed for the US Department of Defence. The patent pending solution ‘Stealth’ is a key differentiator in the company’s four-pillar cloud strategy, which includes data center transformation, a secure public cloud solution, a secure private cloud and the hybrid cloud.
Presently Unisys has the first three aspects available to New Zealand customers, and intends to roll out the “fourth and key component to adoption of a cloud service”, the hybrid cloud, in early 2010 in line with customer demand. The hybrid cloud allows companies to combine the best of public and private cloud capabilities by providing extra capacity to scale up and down during peaks and troughs. Paul Allen, Sales Director Realtime Infrastructure Asia Pacific Systems & Technology for Unisys Australia said: “A lot of cloud providers at the moment are just talking about infrastructure. We are saying, it’s much more important than just infrastructure. When you change the way you are delivering your infrastructure, you are impacting how your applications behave and operate, and you need to ensure that you are looking at it holistically; infrastructure, applications, wrap them around with business process and business process implications.”
The most important aspect, however, is the encrypted, bit-split data and new “cloaking” technology of Stealth, which operates at layer 2 of the network, making the cloud environments extremely secure and simplifying the network infrastructure by negating the need for multiple VPNs.
“No one else has Stealth capability,” said Allen. “It is revolutionary in the way it can transmit data over the internet. It’s the whole holistic approach to security that differentiates Unisys.”
In fact Unisys’s cloud data centers around the globe are all independently certified to SAS 70 Type 2 certified data centers and ISO 27000 certification. This extensive security is currently protecting some of the most sensitive data in the US and means that companies can move much more sensitive data to the cloud. While financials, planning and mission-critical applications are likely to remain in the private cloud or data center, many day-to-day operations can now be hosted in the cloud thanks to the increased security offerings.
Although the hybrid model is likely to be available in 2010, Brett Hodgson, Managing Director of Unisys New Zealand, explained that Unisys currently had a company interested in this option. The vendor is so set on having the perfect fit, however, that Unisys has suggested they stay with their current provider at present. Hodgson explained that really all the client wanted was Infrastructure-as-a-Service and this is not a true reflection of the capabilities of a hybrid cloud.
One of the other attractions of the Unisys offering is that the company is not just operating on a virtualised cloud platform. “We are not just provisioning through cloud virtual servers; clients can actually turn on physical servers that are discrete and only for them and a particular application,” explained Hodgson – something that is proving very popular with customers.
