Unisys unrolls blueprints for business

NEW YORK — Unisys unveiled a package, including technology and services for blueprinting, with the aim of more closely aligning IT strategy with business goals at an event for press and analysts here.

The Blue Bell, Pa.-based company launched Business Blueprinting in conjunction with Microsoft and IBM.

“Blueprinting is a concept of how to make sure IT supports the business vision of a company,” said Lawrence Weinbach, chairman and CEO of Unisys. “It’s a way to deal with a very difficult issue: How to build the systems you need, do it on time, on budget, reduce the cost, and provide an ROI.”

Weinbach likened the conglomeration of products, standards, and services to a set of blueprints for redesigning a house or building, in that it is important before moving forward or one might end a project with the bathroom and plumbing not coming together.

“What you want to know before you start is that you have all the right pieces in all the right places,” he said.

To that end, the Business Blueprinting initiative has four models: Business vision, business processes and patterns, function and applications, and infrastructure.

“Our mantra is reuse before buy, buy before build, and build for reuse,” said Joe McGrath, president of Unisys’ enterprise transformation services unit.

Unisys’ own industry expertise combined with technologies such as J2EE, .Net, Web services, UML (Unified Modeling Language), BPEL (Business Process Execution Language), XML, and application development and modeling tools from IBM’s Rational division form the foundation of Business Blueprinting, McGrath said.

“That platform enables what we do,” he said.

Blueprinting occurs on top of that, while industry-specific solutions result from the blueprinting, McGrath added. “We are building blueprints across all our major industries,” he said.

At the event Unisys announced a number of vertical solutions, including insurance, banking, airline reservations, health care, justice and public safety, tax and revenue management, registry and ID, cargo security, multimedia messaging, newspaper and Web publishing, and integrated trade replenishment.

As part of its partnership strategy around blueprinting, Unisys and Microsoft also at the event detailed a workshop that the two companies plan to open in Microsoft’s hometown of Redmond, Wash. Team Jupiter Lab will provide a place for software developers to design applications using BizTalk, underlying technology in Microsoft’s Jupiter bundle, which consists of BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, and Content Management Server.

The lab connects Unisys blueprint with Microsoft’s technology approach, according to Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president of platform strategy and partner group at Microsoft.

“We’re at the beginning of this next IT evolution, and we’ve got a long way to go,” Parasarathy said.

Indeed, presenters and panelists said that IT and business have thus far not been aligned successfully enough.

“Historically, IT had a priest-like quality that made it hard for business to access. Now, I’d say the shoe is on the other foot,” said Geoffrey Moore, chairman of Chasm Group, based in San Mateo, Calif.

George Colony, chairman and CEO of Forrester Research, in Cambridge, Mass., said that transforming companies into operations where IT and business are more closely aligned won’t be solved overnight.

“It’s an ongoing [process]. It’s not a big bang,” Colony said.

The industry change that’s coming is that vendors can no longer sell technology without helping customers with the processes involved, he explained.

Weinbach summed up Unisys Business Blueprint efforts, “To me, it’s about money. How you can get more from the dollars you spend.”