Unisys Study Sees Significant Technology Hurdles In Business Quest to Move Faster and Anticipate Market Changes

BLUE BELL, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 5, 2003--

The agile corporation is a realistic model for inventing the next-generation company, report confirms

Despite the competitive pressure to create more agile organizations able to respond to changing customer and market needs, most companies don't have an IT infrastructure that is up to meeting the real-time enterprise challenge, according to a report released today by Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS).

However, the findings point to several key strategic and technical capabilities seen as essential to building a real-time organization over the next three to five years.

The report, entitled The Agile Corporation: How Real? How Achievable?, is based on a global survey of more than 350 C-level business executives, senior IT executives and industry analysts, commissioned by Unisys and conducted by ICR, an independent research firm.

The report reveals that spending on the development and deployment of new business applications -- a key indicator of a company's strategic focus -- now represents 39 percent of the total IT budget. Over the next three years, spending in this area will increase by 28 percent.

This high level of investment probably reflects the fact that only 12 percent of the companies surveyed are "highly satisfied" with their current application development environment. Approximately half are "just satisfied." Meanwhile, two out of every five companies expressed some level of dissatisfaction, the report finds.

The results were similarly discouraging when IT executives were asked to rate their own operations using a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being extremely poor and 10 being extremely good. Here, they rated their operations according to the three standards below, each seen as key to enabling corporate agility:

• Bringing products and services to market quickly: 6.5
• Incorporating new technological innovation and solutions: 6.5
• Facilitating connectivity between business units and with business partners: 6.4

The industry analysts surveyed were especially critical of corporate IT's capabilities in the three areas above, giving them ratings of 4.9, 4.5 and 4.1, respectively.

"IT may be showing the symptoms, but the real problem lies in our legacy business models," said Ralph Welborn, managing partner, Global Transformation Group, Unisys Global Industries. "Management proficiency is breaking down under the weight of an interconnected, real-time marketplace -- an environment marked by accelerated change, complex interactive effects and highly unstable economic conditions. Indeed, the rules have changed to the point that business needs a new blueprint for the future."

Among the business requirements of an agile corporation that a majority of the C-level executives interviewed saw as "definitely" or "probably" evolving were:

• Connecting information flows in order to predict threats and anticipate continual change (26 percent said "definitely," 43 percent " probably")
• Investing in systems that can see patterns -- and the underlying opportunities in those patterns -- to strengthen executive decision-making and strategy formation (22 percent said "definitely," 40 percent "probably")
• Flexible and rapid modification of business process workflow to create superior customer satisfaction and competitive advantage (36 percent said "definitely," 33 percent "probably")
• Collaborative workflow management -- connecting people across and outside the organization -- in order to respond rapidly to change (19 percent said "definitely," 35 percent "probably")
• IT solutions that support open standards and have sufficient flexibility to minimize obsolescence (36 percent said "definitely," 45 percent said "probably")
• Managing large enterprise-wide projects by breaking them down into subcomponents that are less complex to build and can be rapidly reassembled into new solutions as conditions change (35 percent said "definitely," 40 percent "probably")

"It is clear that, today and tomorrow, faster innovation, flexible adaptability, sustainability and collaborative innovation are the new attributes of success," stated Mr. Welborn. "The question is, can most companies execute against -- and ultimately realize -- this vastly more agile model of commerce? Only time will tell, but gauging from this survey, agility to enable a real-time enterprise is the new business imperative that few organizations can afford to ignore."

About the Study

To better understand and forecast how business practices and IT requirements are being reshaped, Unisys commissioned three separate but related surveys. Conducted in September and October of 2002, more than 350 professionals were interviewed by telephone or over the Internet.

To assess the divergence of opinion on selected business issues, ICR, an independent research firm, selected respondents from three groups: (1) "C-level" business executives, (2) senior IT executives and (3) industry analysts. Respondents also were drawn from both sides of the Atlantic and distributed by company size. The report is available at http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/agile_corporation/

About Unisys

Unisys is a worldwide information technology services and solutions company. Our people combine expertise in systems integration, outsourcing, infrastructure, server technology and consulting with precision thinking and relentless execution to help clients, in more than 100 countries, quickly and efficiently achieve competitive advantage. For more information, visit www.unisys.com

RELEASE NO.: 0303/8240

http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/news_a_events/03058240.htm

Unisys is a registered trademark of Unisys Corporation. All other brands and products referenced herein are acknowledged to be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

CONTACT:
Unisys Corporation
Linda Butler, 312/832-7270
linda.g.butler@unisys.com
or
Weber Shandwick for Unisys
Dawn Kahle, 972.830-2428
dkahle@webershandwick.com
SOURCE: Unisys Corporation