When Unisys announced new additions to its Clearpath Enterprise Server line, the Dorado and Libra 800, the lead information provided about the new servers wasn't so much focused on the mission critical role that these servers are designed to play as it was on the fact that they can be accessed via mobile devices.
Unisys makes some very interesting enterprise-class server products that reflect well on its heritage as a mainframe computer provider. They are in the process of moving their server lines from their own CMOS processors to industry-standard Intel Xeon CPUs and continue to enhance their software components, from their Clearpath MCP software to their high-end fault tolerant XPC-L clustering technology.
But even Unisys realizes that to get attention from potential new customers they need to cater to the high-profile mobile market regardless of the small number of users likely to take full advantage of such solutions. It's not enough to point out that these new servers are the most powerful Unisys has released; that bit of data needs to share the stage with the announcement of added support for the iPad and Blackberry and Android smartphones.
Unisys tested with waters with support for the iPhone and iPod Touch announced last year. Their goal was to allow smartphone users to interact with their mainframe applications without any negative impact on the mainframe operations. Unisys offers their Clearpath ePortal Specialty Engine to facilitate access by mobile devices to their mainframe resources. They clearly feel that their approach has worked and they have now expanded their support to a broader range of mobile devices, including tablets that make much more effective corporate data access devices than smartphones.
A discussion of mobile devices is certain to draw much broader attention than the announcement of another generation of enterprise-class server hardware, but more importantly, it further cements the potential role of mobile devices in the enterprise and speaks well to vendors understanding of how the future of corporate computing seems to be shaping up
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