back to article Unisys halts and catches fire: Mainframe builder dives into the red

Mainframe maker Unisys plunged into the red during its second quarter of 2015, posting losses of $58.2m (£37.6m). The losses quadrupled compared with its second quarter in 2014, when the biz dropped $12.1m over the three-month period. Overall revenues dropped five per cent to $765m (£494m). Nevertheless, chief exec Peter …

  1. future research

    What Unisys need is a new dress code policy.

    1. earl grey
      Unhappy

      Dress code

      Does that mean I'm not permitted to wear my Mapper tie?

    2. FrankAlphaXII

      Just like HP right?

      That kind of thinking reminds me of the Army. To quote Colonel Charles Alvin Beckwith, the man who fought with the US Army for years after he'd been with the SAS on an exchange program to create something like the SAS here, which eventually became Delta Force (or whatever you wanna call em, Delta, Task Force Green, 1SFOD-D, CAG, The Fort Bragg Bicycle club, etc. It must be nice to not exist.): "The problem with officers is that they worry about pissants while elephants are stomping them into the ground". And its true.

      Save a sinking ship with a tie and jacket, yeah right.

  2. Stevie

    Bah!

    The Walrus and the Carpenter were walking close at hand

    And they wept like anything to see the legacy of Rand

    "If only there were strategy" they said, "It would be grand".

    "If seven men with seven brains worked on what to do

    Do you suppose", the Walrus said, "that they could get a clue?"

    "I doubt it" said the Carpenter, and took a sniff of glue.

    "Oh customers do walk with us" the Walrus did entreat

    "And buy once more our lovely kit" (the thought of sales were sweet)

    "Some products from the dawn of time your business needs will meet".

    "But wait a bit" the customers cried "before we go and sign"

    "This kit is from the nineties, have you no newer design?"

    "I doubt it" said the Walrus "put your name down on the line".

    "Oh customers" said the Carpenter "you've had a pleasant run"

    "But our RDBMS is still on version none"

    "Can we sell you something else like Cool Ice e're we're done?"

    The Carpenter stood waiting for an answer in the sun,

    But he stood in vain because of answers there came none,

    And that was scarce surprising 'cause they'd b*tt-f*cked everyone.

    Again.

    1. FrankAlphaXII
      Thumb Up

      Re: Bah!

      Best post I've seen on El Reg in awhile Stevie, creative, funny, and above all, true.

      You should get a Gold Badge for it, IMHO.

  3. ben_myers

    The last of the BUNCH

    Well, Unisys are the last of the bunch, despite the name change from Univac to Unisys. Looks like they won't last much longer. Never mind the losses. The revenue is puny. Well, mind the losses and wait for the final curtain.

    1. Stevie

      Re: The last of the BUNCH

      Univac->Sperry Univac->Sperry->Unisys (the popular alternative at the time was "Spurroughs")

      Unisys have had some fine products, a great OS, and some innovative ideas on hardware. What they have never had in the 30+ years I worked on their kit in my opinion, is any kind of vision for how and where to move forward and market it to the world.

      They also suck balls when it comes to PR. In the 80s, if you booked an airline ticket in the western world the chances were better than 80% that your transaction passed through Unisys kit at some point in the process. I'll bet you never knew that, even if you are old enough for it to have mattered to you.

      In the early 90s I was asked by an IBM DBA how much data we lost when we had a disc failure/recovery, and I didn't understand the question, because for me the answer was "none" and had been for years. I just assumed everyone was on the same page as Unisys when it came to low-level integrated recovery but for other manufacturers it was apparently rocket science made of unobtanium. It was easy to take this sort of stuff for granted because Unisys didn't make a big deal out of their achievements, something everyone else calls "marketing" and understands as essential for business.

      Unisys were also open before there was a popular recognition of the term. If you wanted to know how anything worked they would not only give you a manual, they'd show you the code. This prepared me badly for dealing with the "so far and no further shall ye tread" Black Box world of IBM I inhabit these days.

      Ah f*ck it. If Unisys don't care, why should anyone else?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The last of the BUNCH

        AFAIK, IBM's System/38 (later known as AS/400, iSeries, etc) was the first commercially available system to implement a "disk parity" (RAID) data protection/recovery system. Having suffered through more than one disk failure during those years, though, I don't know for sure that it actually worked as advertised, at least not in its earliest implementations.

        Also, IIRC, at one time IBM was legally forced by one or more Consent Decrees to provide access to its source code and full documentation for all their internals and hardware. They didn't necessarily make this physically easy, though, and once these Consent Decrees started expiring they started backtracking on it - which ticked off a lot of people and didn't particularly help their position in the market, either. One of the ironies here is that the IBM PC took off the way it did precisely because it was so open and well-documented, at least in relative terms - plus, IBM's name still carried a huge amount of weight back then.

        What "IBM Black Box" are you dealing with these days?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    FS

    Unisys are are dying the death of the thousands cuts, they just can't compete with the younger, hungrier guys in the market. I've dealt with them a lot in FS and they struck me as old fashioned and complacent. Too reliant on board room level relationships for continued business and not enough on delivering what customers actually want.

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