Higher mainframe sales put Unisys into profit

By ADAM GIFFORD


Seven mainframe sales and new service contracts helped Unisys to a $10.7 million after-tax profit on revenues of $161 million last year.

This compared with a $2.4 million loss on revenue of $129 million in 2001, according to the company's accounts at the Companies Office. They show tax of $5.4 million in the latest year, against a $1.5 million refund previously.

Spokeswoman Joanna Grochowicz said the company's outsourcing revenue nearly doubled, and now accounted for between 70 and 80 per cent of its business.

Technology sales grew 55 per cent after a dip in 2001 and mainframe customers included The Warehouse, police, Westpac, Foodstuffs and BHP New Zealand.

"We also built up the computing on demand business at our Kapiti and Auckland data centres and the New Zealand managed services business joined the Unisys Global Network, so it was able to provide managed services to global customers," Grochowicz said.

The momentum had continued this year, with a similar number of mainframe sales to ASB Bank, the Ministry of Social Development, and Alliance Group, and three-year outsourcing contracts with Executive Government, Inland Revenue, Telecom support services, Foodstuffs and The Warehouse.

The major item of unfinished business was the Public Access to Legislation project for the Parliamentary Counsel Office, where Unisys has been trying to create a system that will allow law drafters to publish their work in print and on the web in the same format.

The project was suspended after most of the $8 million budget was spent and Unisys said it would need more money to complete it.

A technical review was carried out by Australian company InQuirion, but its contents have not been released.

The select committee's financial review of the Parliamentary Counsel Office said the project had chewed up management time, delaying other initiatives aimed at making legislation easier to understand.

The report said: "We are concerned that the PAL projects delay and the associated costs are symptomatic of the regularity with which Government IT contracts experience difficulties worldwide."

The committee was advised that problems with PAL arose from the complexity of New Zealand's legislation and the parliamentary process.

A particular concern appeared to be in the formatting of revision tracking which had required the contracting of an English company specialising in font design coding.

The committee said that "Parliamentary Counsel should consider changing font types and the revision tracking methodology to accommodate standard systems rather than holding out for uniquely designed software that copes with the status quo".