Cathay Pacific Airways has signed a data centre outsourcing deal with Unisys Australia. The contract is for three years, with an option to extend for another two. (5/19/2006)

Unisys will move Cathay's reservations, departure control, and cargo platforms to the Unisys data centre in Rhodes.

The IT vendor would oversee the management of middleware applications and the migration from legacy communications handlers to a Unisys Online Message Switching Engine, Unisys said. Cathay runs the Unisys USAS airline application software and a related contract covers extensions to these USAS licenses.

Cathay chose Unisys because of its technical expertise, its deep experience in the airline industry, its competitive pricing and a low-risk migration plan for moving our systems,?said Anthony Yeung, general manager, Information Management, Cathay Pacific. We needed to be assured of high availability for these critical systems as well as having sufficient flexibility to cater for growth and fluctuations in demand.