Unisys gearing up for changes in outsourcing

Shane Gaskin has a feel for that moment when the customer gives up.

It's a key attribute for someone in the business of outsourcing, and Gaskin, the director of Unisys's Australasian data centre operations, has made a science out of knowing when a customer is ready to give up trying to run rooms full of expensive and sensitive computers in-house. my support calls answered, how quickly do I want to get my data back if there is a failure at my end?"

It's when their needs change from "should I buy this server or that storage rack?" Gaskin says, to "how do I keep my applications running, how quickly do I want

It's also when they are ready to sit down with a company such as US-based global IT services provider Unisys and break down what is required to run their business.

The nature of outsourcing is changing as well. It's no longer just the domain of large companies and Government departments - the complexity of modern computing environments and the rapid rate of change mean increasingly smaller companies are buying outsourced solutions.

Unisys is gearing up for this growth with plans to double the size of its data centre at Paraparaumu on the Kapiti Coast near Wellington at a cost of $2.5 million. Its existing 500sq m room, built five years ago, is almost at full capacity. First though, Gaskin says the company wants to get more customers for its new data centre in the Sydney suburb of Rhodes, near the Olympic stadium.

Gaskin is also responsible for data centres in Perth and Penrose, Auckland. Paraparaumu, Perth and eventually Shanghai are to be command centres for the region.

"We are taking the (managed services) model we have created in New Zealand across Asia-Pacific," he says.

In the past, Unisys Australia concentrated on business process outsourcing - mainly cheque clearance and mortgage processing. EDS does most of that work in New Zealand because of its heritage in Databank, so with that avenue closed, Unisys New Zealand has focused on service delivery.

"The data centre is a potential hub for innovation and learning. The team learns from experience of different customer environments," Gaskin says.

Unisys is well down the road to utility computing, where customers buy processing or storage on demand, and to virtualisation, where all processors or storage can be treated as part of a single logical entity, Gaskin says.