THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 18, 1996 TAG: 9604180339
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
For most of the 18 years that Unisys Corp. or its predecessor companies have had operations on Lynnhaven Parkway, the emphasis has been on defense.
It made sense. Computer and information-technology companies here and elsewhere in the region had little reason to chase anything other than military contracts.
But local Unisys managers saw the handwriting on the wall several years ago and started casting for a product or service with potential outside the shrinking defense establishment.
On Wednesday, Unisys officials commemorated the fruits of that early effort: the opening of a laboratory to develop and test a highly specialized computer system that is being marketed to phone companies.
Nearly 70 of the 200 Unisys employees at Lynnhaven now work at the lab and the program that it is part of. Unisys executives said they expect that number to grow if their hopes for worldwide distribution of the computer systems are realized.
``This is a good example of how defense conversion is working well,'' said Tim Ryan, production manager for Unisys' Technology Solutions Center, which is what the company calls its Lynnhaven location.
Ryan said Unisys already has installed some of the computers and their associated software at Ameritech, the Midwestern regional Bell company. He said trials are under way with Pacific Bell and Nynex as well and that Unisys has had discussions with telecommunications companies in Europe and Latin America, too.
Basically, the NIRIS system helps phone companies more accurately measure traffic on their networks and thus manage the networks more efficiently, Ryan said.
One key issue for phone companies in an increasingly competitive environment will be determining how to compensate each other when exchanging phone traffic or using one another's networks. Ryan said the NIRIS system will help companies sort out such issues.
Another application, he said, will be to curtail fraud. He said the system can be used to help track down and recover money from the users of stolen calling cards.
The nearly $4 million that Unisys has invested in the lab was footed by the company's communications division. But the employees themselves are paid by Unisys' federal systems division, the Unisys group that handles government contracts. Ryan said the program has been a good example of cooperation within the company.
For Unisys executives, the lab's opening was a welcome chanceto talk about growth markets. For much of the past several years, the main news out of Blue Bell, Pa., Unisys' headquarters, has been of retrenchment: waves of layoffs, and the selling or closing of business units. Some Unisys employees in Hampton Roads, including some others at Lynnhaven, shifted to Loral Corp. as part of one sale.
In January, Unisys took a $582 million charge against earnings to help cover the severance costs of terminating 7,900 workers.
Its ultimate success in the new program in Virginia Beach is unassured. Unisys faces stiff competition in the market, most notably from Hewlett-Packard Co.
But Unisys' Ryan said, ``We're very optimistic about how the product will evolve.'' by CNB