Unisys wins massive data centre deal with Cathay Pacific

Stan Beer
Sunday, 14 May 2006 18:40

IT Industry - Deals

IT services provider Unisys Australia has signed a multi-million dollar contract with Cathay Pacific Airways to host the airline’s core business applications.

The contract is for three years, with an option to extend for another two. Unisys will move Cathay’s reservations, departure control, and cargo platforms to the Unisys data centre in Rhodes, west of Sydney.

“Cathay chose Unisys because of its technical expertise, its deep experience of the airline industry, its competitive pricing and a low-risk migration plan for moving our systems,” said Anthony Yeung, general manager, Information Management, Cathay Pacific.  “We needed to be assured of high availability for these critical systems as well as having sufficient flexibility to cater for growth and fluctuations in demand.”

The contract encompasses Unisys hosting of the airline’s passenger reservations, departure control and cargo management systems. Unisys has been providing these services as a sub-contractor for nine years, and the new contract includes new services added to the scope. These include the management of middleware applications and the migration from legacy communications handlers to a Unisys Online Message Switching Engine. Cathay runs the Unisys USAS airline application software and a related contract covers extensions to these USAS licenses.

“Cathay has used Unisys reservations, departure control and cargo applications for more than two decades and during that time we have demonstrated a commitment and expertise in supporting the airline’s IT applications,” said Andrew Barkla, vice president, Unisys Asia-Pacific. “Organisations need to strike a balance between security as defence and protection, and security as confidence and trust.  Unisys is in the business of providing solutions that allow customers to run their operations securely in all key aspects – secure in the technology sense, secure in knowing that their service provider understands their business, and secure in the belief that their business will run effectively every day.”