Allen has been sounding out the local market for cloud services since May this year, and has found most interest coming from Federal and State government, large enterprise and banking. That lines up with analyst Gartner’s findings.

A Gartner blog last week revealed that the firm is receiving a growing number of requests for information about cloud computing with the greatest interest coming from financial services. Seven percent of the queries were also coming from government. Both are sectors where location of data can be a ticklish subject.

Unisys’ own polling has found that security and data privacy were cited by more than half of all respondents to a survey as to the major impediment to cloud based computing. Analysts believe that for some Australian enterprises, particularly banking, health and Government, having cloud based services where data can only be held offshore might make it an unpalatable decision.

Although it has no immediate plans to open a local data centre to underpin its cloud services Unisys is however spruiking its Stealth security solution as an optional cloud add on to calm the nerves of potential clients. A patent-pending technology designed initially for US government applications the Stealth system “cloaks data through multiple levels of authentication, bit-splitting data into multiple packets so it moves almost invisibly across networks.”

Stealth security is available as an add-on option for Unisys cloud customers wanting extra security. The company also announced that it is developing a Stealth system to protect storage assets.

At this stage Unisys is offering to host IT infrastructure for clients, which they manage themselves, or offer a fully managed infrastructure service. It has also packaged up its cloud tools and know-how as a suite of Cloud Transformation Services available for organisations wishing to make the switch to the cloud.

Unisys’ packaged service private cloud solution will be available in Australia from December. This offers storage and server virtualisation and the ability for users to increase or decrease access to capacity on demand.

At present all of Unisys’ cloud services are being delivered from its Eagan data centre on the outskirts of Minneapolis. Its UK based cloud facility is about to come on stream. According to he company; “local delivery capability (is) to be developed to meet demand,” something which Allen told iTWire could be achieved in 6-8 weeks if needed.

Services initially available from the Unisys cloud include infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, disaster recovery as a service and a range of software as a service.