Seamless Connection - Unisys utilises benefits of Mobile Data

If you are a field engineer working on some of the most advanced computing equipment around, you need to practise what your firm preaches.

Instead of depending on telephone operators to organise your appointments and parts of the working day, why not tap straight into the real-time customer service system? That’s just what IT solutions provider Unisys thought when it identified the benefits of giving engineers access to its service management network – and it is now using a Brand Apollo GSM LAN solution to do just that.

Unisys has recently been equipped all of the 230 Unisys engineers in the UK with its Apollo System. Apollo comprises of software that runs on a laptop PC, which communicates via GSM with the Unisys Local Area Network (LAN).

In essence, Apollo seamlessly extends the Unisys network to the field engineers – but behind the scenes there’s some clever technology to ensure consistent, high performance delivery. The data calls are secure, reliable and fast – and there is a feature that saves money which has particularly impresses David Smith, Unisys.

‘The system drops the GSM call when there is no data being passed and resumes when there is – allowing us to cut our on-line time by 75%,’ Smith explains. ‘Across all 230 engineers that will save us a significant amount of GSM air time, and we are confident that the system will pay for itself in months rather than years.’

But the key benefit is direct access to the customer service system, allowing engineers to get immediate first-hand information about calls they need to make. Adds Smith: ‘The engineers are now able to get on with the job rather than worry about the communications, which will add up to satisfied customers and satisfied engineers.’

The mobile data contract, which was won against stiff competition from various networks, technologies and remote access providers, was rolled out to all the Unisys engineers in a matter of weeks. Significantly, the customer service application has required no modification, and the cost of deployment was kept to a minimum because open standards such as TCP/IP and GSM have been used, unlike proprietary networks where the benefits may have been swamped by cost and development delay.

Graeme Birch, Network Consultant at Unisys, comments: ‘To convince everyone of the benefits we ran a trial. Brand Communications was very supportive and a system was up and running in days. It allowed 12 engineers to hammer the system and also helped us produce a meaningful cost-benefit analysis. The results were very positive and enabled us to raise support for a full rollout within very short time scales. Brand’s policy of sticking to standards really paid dividends for us’.

That confidence is now leading Unisys to investigate other areas of its business that could benefit from Apollo, such as ISDN users working at home, and engineers in other European countries. Apollo has lift off………

How it Works

Each Unisys engineer has a portable PC and a Vodafone handset, linked via a data card. The PC is loaded with the Apollo software and the Unisys customer service client software. Engineers dial directly to their host system via the GSM network, which is connected to the Unisys headquarters by private ISDN circuits used for both voice and data. The ISDN lines terminate at the Apollo Access Server, which acts as a gateway to the Unisys local-area network running the host customer service application.

Key features include

• Virtual connection to the host system even when there is no GSM call in progress
• Secure access
• Call recovery in the event of interrupted calls
• Data Compression to maximise throughput
• Calls intelligently dropped when no data is being passed thus saving money on calls (this is called ‘spoofing’.)

About Unisys

Unisys are present in more than 100 countries around the world, leading financial services institutions, airlines, communications providers, commercial market leaders, and government agencies rely on Unisys. They help them apply information technology to streamline operations – anticipate and adapt to change – attract and retain new clients – enable executives to make informed decisions – support front-line employees responding to customer needs – and achieve new levels of competitiveness and success.