Unisys scores big sales

By RICHARD PAMATATAU

Computer-maker Unisys is on a mainframe roll with significant sales of Libra machines to both ASB Bank and the IRD in the last three months.

Mainframes are large, expensive computers favoured by banks and other large companies to process and store huge amounts of information.

The ASB sale may go some way to easing Unisys' loss of its other longstanding banking customer, TSB Bank, to IBM earlier this year.

Clayton Wakefield, ASB Bank operations and chief information manager, said the bank bought a Libra mainframe after purchasing another machine in August last year.

He said the machine would be used as the bank's "secondary mainframe", replacing its older systems.

Meanwhile, the IRD has signed a seven-year mainframe services agreement with EDS New Zealand, replacing an existing agreement that was due to expire in December next year.

The deal strengthens Unisys' hold on government computing.

Part of the deal involves the IRD buying two Unisys 580 Libra mainframes plus supporting software, tapes and disks through EDS.

Colin MacDonald, IRD deputy commissioner of business development and systems, said the IRD had leased its mainframe hardware and software from EDS since 1994, when EDS bought the government computer services provider GCS.

Unisys technology was chosen because Inland Revenue's FIRST system runs on Unisys software.

Last year Unisys sold new machines to the Ministry of Social Development for its benefit assessment and debt recovery systems.