The Unisys Personal Computing Advantage

Complete Solutions Built-To-Customer-Order

THE PC MARKET TODAY: HAVE IT YOUR WAY, NOT THEIR WAY

Today, large organizations, small to medium sized business, government
agencies, small office/home office users and individual users face the
same issues when shopping for PCs and client/server computing products.
The buying motives for these products are usually a trade-off between
price, performance, delivery time, installation, service, support, vendor
reliability and, perhaps, worldwide presence. Yet the success of an
organization or project can depend on the amount of time it takes to
receive equipment, install additional cards and adapters, test the new
configurations, probably re-configure and re-test before deploying new
systems. Such a scenario is magnified geometrically if the installation
and deployment is on a worldwide or national basis. And today's shrinking
world finds even small companies with a demand for overseas business. Too
often, customers turn to their suppliers with a list of specific needs and
configurations only to find the desired configuration is not available.
Have it your way, not their way.

HAVE IT YOUR WAY: BUILD-TO-CUSTOMER-ORDER

With more than 60,000 customers worldwide -- including 23 of 25 of the
world's largest banks, 35 of the world's largest telephone companies, 1600
government agencies and 140 airlines worldwide -- Unisys is in a position
to know what customers want. While the instant gratification of walking
into a PC superstore and walking out with a system a short time later
sounds appealing, the reality is that all of the systems, extra memory,
network adapters, CD-ROMs, hard drives, sound cards and other components
must be installed after the components are bought, either by the retailer,
at extra cost, or by the purchaser. And most computer literate personnel
will freely admit that tinkering with DMAs, IRQs, Config files and memory
addresses can lead to madness or, at the very least, anger and
frustration.

A solution to customer configuration of purchased equipment is the Unisys
Build-To-Customer-Order (BTCO) process. Designed and implemented in 1994,
the BTCO process improves quality, reduces shipping time, reduces cost and
provides the added assurance that systems are pre- tested and
pre-configured at the factory. The payoff for customers is to plug it in
and it runs.

THE Z BOX

Core to the BTCO process is a hardware design called the "Z Box". This is a
non-functioning unit that will have associated dependent and selectable
options. To effect economies of scale, a Z Box is shared across multiple
Unisys product families. Common components of the Z Box are the chassis,
power supply, motherboard, cables, brackets and packaging materials. To
each Z Box are added dependencies such as:

 Pentium or Pentium Pro processors of varying speeds
 Floppy drives
 DRAM
 Cache memory
 Video card and video memory

Customers can select standard configurations that include many of the most
asked for features such as hard drives and memory. However the needs of
the large organization might typically call for non- standard
configurations. The BTCO process can accommodate specialized
configurations of all of the following selectable options:

 Hard drives
 CD-ROMs
 QIC or DAT tape
 Additional DRAM
 Additional cache memory
 Additional video memory
 LAN cards
 SCSI, PCI or ISA cards
 Third party boards (2Q95)
 Pre-loaded operating system software
 Pre-loaded application software (2Q95)

Where appropriate, these dependent and selectable options are common across
mobile, desktop and server platforms, providing leverage for Unisys and
consistency and greater quality to the customer.

Whether the configuration is pre-configured or a la carte, it is built to
order, configured in the factory, tested in the factory and shipped to the
customer so that they can just plug it in and it runs.

SOFTWARE THAT JUST RUNS

Once the headache of installing additional hardware components is
completed, the next daunting task is making the software work with it.
Inserting multiple floppy disks to load the operating system is a time
consuming activity. If a network operating system is to be loaded, even
more time is consumed and application software adds even further
complexity. The BTCO process eliminates wasted time and effort by having
key operating environments loaded and tested at the factory. Unisys
Aquanta notebook and desktop systems come with DOS 6.x and Windows For
Workgroups 3.11 pre-loaded on the hard drive. While some vendors offer
this level of service, Unisys extends software qualification to the
network operating system (NOS) for high-end desktop systems through
fault-resilient, multiprocessor servers. Customers can specify SCO Open
Server, IBM OS/2 LAN Server or Novell NetWare. All products are
pre-qualified on Unisys Aquanta servers using the latest version of each
NOS so that customers are assured of compatibility.

Unisys BTCO also features special "bundles" of pre-loaded software. For
example, SCO Open Server can come pre-installed with Lotus Notes enabling
quick implementation of one of the premier groupware products. For
customers who want application software pre-loaded, the BTCO program can
fully accommodate them. Database software such as Progress or Oracle or
application software such as the Unisys banking solution, FBA Navigator,
can be factory installed offering a comprehensive customer solution.
Whether its software or hardware, the Unisys Build-To-Customer-Order is
designed to make client/sever computing installation as painless as
possible.

YOU WANT IT WHEN?

One of the most frustrating situations customers encounter is walking into
their favorite computer superstore, specifications in-hand, only to find
that desired configuration is not in stock. At this point, customers face
compromise. Will one select a more fully featured model at greater cost or
a less costly model of lower performance or with less features? This
situation is magnified considerably when systems are being purchased for
national or worldwide deployment. Customers with such requirements want
the right product with the right features right now.

Because the order entry, raw material inventory and manufacturing systems
are also part of the Unisys BTCO process, customers will be able to have
the right product with the right features right now. Orders for Unisys
Aquanta systems and software are committed at the time of order entry so
customers will know the status of their configuration. Once placed, custom
configurations are shipped to the purchaser within 5 days (up to 10 days
for some international deliveries) with the goal of the BTCO system being
to meet 99% of daily customer requirements. Another goal of the system is
quality, 99.9% arrival quality error free. A recent survey of Unisys
arrival quality showed Unisys PCs to have a three times better out of box
audit performance than the industry average.

BUILT-TO-CUSTOMER-ORDER ADVANTAGES

The BTCO system affords numerous benefits to PC and server customers
worldwide. Customers get their entire order pre-tested and pre-configured.
Orders are more complete, quality is higher and the customer requested
delivery date is met. Because Unisys has a reduced operating cost and
inventory expense, overall cost is reduced. And overall customer service
is greatly improved. Jose Flahaux, vice president and general manager for
Unisys Products, Services & Information group said, "Making
Built-To-Customer-Order products plus excellent customer support are key
differentiators in the client/server market. Unisys accomplishes this by
providing reliable, fast-cycle products and services at competitive
prices."

For Unisys, leading edge products are not enough. The real differentiators
are worldwide service and support plus a delivery process that offers
custom configurations for customers in the right place at the right time.
Unisys...PCs and Servers for maximum advantage.

AQUANTA: The end of the impersonal personal computer.

The beginning of the new wave.

UNISYS -- THE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT COMPANY

Unisys is one of a select group of companies with the portfolio of
services, technologies and third party alliances needed to deliver the
benefits of information management -- helping clients use their
information asset to enhance their competitiveness and responsiveness to
customers. Our expertise in information management is founded on the
strengths of our three global businesses: consulting, solutions and
systems integration; industry-leading technologies; and comprehensive
services and products supporting distributed computing environments.
Access the Unisys home page on the World Wide Web -- http://www.unisys.com
-- for further information.

PERSONAL COMPUTER DIVISION (PCD)

The charter of PCD is to provide optimized client/server computing
solutions to PC customers worldwide. PCD applies mission-critical quality
standards to hardware and qualifies virtually every software operating
environment for Unisys PC and server platforms. Access the Personal
Computer Division home page on the World Wide Web --
http://www.pc.unisys.com -- for further information.
 
 =========================================================
 From the 'New Product News' Electronic News Service on...
 AOL (Keyword = New Products) and Delphi (GO COMP PROD)
 =========================================================
 This information was processed from data provided by the
 company/author mentioned. For additional details, please
 contact them directly at the address/phone# indicated.
 Trademarks are the property of their respective owners!
 =========================================================
 All submissions for this service should be addressed to:
 BAKER ENTERPRISES,  20 Ferro Dr,  Sewell, NJ  08080  USA
 Email:   rbakerpc@aol.com   --or--   rbakerpc@delphi.com
 =========================================================
