BIG DATA

Unisys Corporation announced today that it has signed a six-year contract to provide infrastructure and enterprise application management services to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and three of its partner organizations. Under this multi-year, $27.5 million contract, Unisys and its subcontractor, Corio, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIO), will deliver a full enterprise application suite including financials, human resources, data warehousing and customer relationship management (CRM). "UNDP and its partners require a secure and reliable enterprise system," said Norman (Sandy) Sanders, chief information officer at the United Nations. "We have selected Unisys for its global delivery capability, predictable and affordable economics, and support of Corio's Applications on Demand(TM) platform." Unisys, as the prime vendor, will provide program management and system integration services for a full suite of enterprise applications based on the Corio Applications on Demand(TM) platform. Corio Applications on Demand(TM) is a utility-like approach to delivering software as a service and is available for a fixed monthly fee. "Unisys excels at delivering complex systems worldwide," said Greg Baroni, president, Unisys Global Public Sector. "Our support and management of these operations frees the UNDP and its partner organizations to focus their resources on vital international relief programs." "On demand computing reduces the cost of enterprise systems," said John Ottman, executive vice president of Worldwide Markets at Corio. "Corio's Applications on Demand(TM) platform streamlines IT processes, improves organizational throughput, and delivers the strict security and high operational standards required by these UN organizations." The UNDP, the lead UN organization in the contract, is on the ground in more than 140 countries working on solutions to global and national development challenges including democratic governance, poverty reduction, and crisis prevention and recovery. Organizations participating with UNDP and headquartered in New York are the United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Office for Project Services. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is also participating and is based in Geneva. Collectively the four UN organizations channel more than $4 billion annually into a wide array of development and relief programmes and projects. They see their collaboration on this shared outsourcing project as a significant example of the harmonization and simplification that Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for in his reform programme for the UN system.