Wrapping up the Universe

I’m a little tardy in regards to providing a wrap up from our recent attendance at the Universe conference in Chicago, you can blame a certain mouse in the Orlando area for the delay.

In regards to the conference, I’d first like to say a big Thank You! to Unisys for inviting us to participate! It was an incredible group of end users and partners that we were able to interact with and get to know.  We did have to answer numerous questions about our somewhat mysterious reason for attending, mysterious until the Wednesday morning session.

During that session, Unisys pre-announced their Forward Platform.  This platform brings the predictive performance and stability of a mainframe environment to the x86 world, thus making it the perfect target for Unix to Linux conversions and mission critical applications.  This platform allows creating partitions from today’s current x86 processors with support of operating systems such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

This combination is important because it brings the best of the mainframe and open source worlds together with two companies that have clearly illustrated a firm understanding of both.

Unisys has a long history of building secure and stable systems from the OS2200 side and of building powerful systems like the ES7000 to run industry standard operating systems.  They are now taking the next step and combining the two with the new Forward Platform.

SUSE has a long history of creating the perfect environment for mission critical applications that mixes well with the new Forward Platform.  Whether it is providing an open source Geo-Cluster HA solution, demonstrating leadership in both Mainframe and PowerLinux or providing the best supported Enterprise Linux, SUSE is the leader in open source innovation for mission critical environments.  This claim is easily validated by our partnerships where SUSE Linux is the OS of choice.  Some of these partnerships include: Teradata where SUSE is the single OS running their platform, SAP HANA solutions where SUSE is the only OS supported and many other mission critical solutions where SUSE is used in healthcare devices, air traffic control systems, etc.

Here at SUSE, we are proud to be partnered with a company like Unisys where vision and execution are creating real solutions for the market through unique offerings that answer real business challenges.  I firmly believe that SUSE on the Forward Platform brings the right combination of unique features that will benefit our joint customers and allow them to finally migrate away from the dusty, barely breathing RISC systems hiding in the corner.