The ClearPath Program Takes its Next, Bold Step

It’s been an unbelievable year.

Like we do at the start of every year, we viewed 2015 as an opportunity to build upon the achievements of the past and steer the ClearPath® program in an exciting new direction. And when you take a look at everything we achieved over the last 12 months, it’s safe to say that we more than delivered on this goal.

There were the releases of ClearPath MCP 17.0, ClearPath OS 2200 16.0, and ClearPath ePortal 6.1 – significant, mid-year updates to our core operating environments and mobility solution that brought a host of new features and innovative enhancements to the ClearPath user community.

This summer, we introduced the ClearPath Software Series. A suite of software-only deliverables – which includes ClearPath MCP Developer Studio, ClearPath MCP Developer Studio Personal Edition, and ClearPath MCP Express – the ClearPath Software Series dramatically redefines how clients are able to leverage the capabilities within the ClearPath environment.

And then we come to the ClearPath Dorado 8300 systems. Without a doubt our biggest achievement of the year, these systems represent the culmination of a strategy a decade in the making. By building them on an all Intel® foundation that delivers performance and capabilities unseen in any Dorado model to date – including those built on proprietary processor technology – we surpassed the goals established in the ClearPath Next-Generation Server Architecture Strategy.

Today, all ClearPath Libra and Dorado systems are Intel® based and leverage the fabric architecture – a shift that positions them to serve as central components of tomorrow’s hybrid-IT, software-defined data centers.

And with the release of our latest innovation, we’re one step closer to turning this into a reality.

Say hello to ClearPath Forward™.

The Best of Both Worlds

What we had up until this point referred to as “the fabric” will now be known as ClearPath Forward. But this is far more than a simple name change.

In a move designed to blend established ClearPath strengths and new innovations with the engineering ingenuity behind the Forward! by Unisys™ enterprise computing platform, ClearPath Forward extends the capabilities of the fabric-based infrastructure with a suite of new features that adds immense value to clients’ ClearPath environments.

Secure Fabrics
One of the primary goals we set out to achieve with ClearPath Forward was to give clients a foundation on which to build and implement a high-performance enterprise application environment capable of easily sharing data – in real-time – between ClearPath systems and standard technology for better agility, responsiveness, and time to value.

To support this goal, we’ve made the ability to build multiple secure fabrics within the ClearPath Forward environment a cornerstone of the release. Secure fabrics allow you to segment and isolate traffic over the environment’s internal high-speed interconnect and develop secure, dedicated data lanes, helping you subdivide quality of service and realize predictable, secure communication for virtualized and partitioned workloads alike.

In addition, the secure fabrics validate and authenticate end points using an out-of-band connection, so you can protect network communications while avoiding the susceptibility to VLAN hopping attacks created by other approaches. And with native RDMA support, ClearPath Forward helps you accelerate throughput without straining CPU memory.

Plus, the new corporate LAN gateway functionality unifies your network investment by making it possible for the high-speed interconnects that link the secure fabrics within the ClearPath Forward infrastructure to integrate with your data center’s existing Ethernet backbones.

And by increasing the capabilities available in the Unisys Data Exchange product, you can now post transactional data in near real time from ClearPath MCP and ClearPath OS 2200 databases to Microsoft® SQL Server®, making it easier to support business process integration, reporting, business intelligence, and big data analytics.

In addition, the Application Integration Services product now enables .NET developers to include ClearPath transactions and functions in their applications using standard .NET tools.

Beyond Virtualization
To help clients streamline their virtual environments and further increase workload density, ClearPath Forward includes a plug-in that integrates with VMware® vCenter™ and enables you to provision Microsoft Windows® and Linux® partitions directly from vCenter for a streamlined, single-pane-of-glass management and user experience. You also have the ability to view the status of these partitions right in the vCenter portal, helping you unify management across environments.

Support for technology from Docker, Inc. further simplifies the implementation and management of virtual Windows and Linux environments. This technology utilizes a single operating environment to deploy multiple virtualized workloads, enabling you to load a greater number onto a physical host.

As a result, you can reduce system overhead while delivering increased performance and greater workload density. Docker containers also make application workloads portable between hosts or servers, further simplifying application management.

Greater Flexibility
In addition to delivering increased control, greater predictability, and simplified management, ClearPath Forward significantly expands on the high levels of flexibility already available in the ClearPath environment.

Aside from your host MCP or OS 2200 environments, you now have the option to divide each Enterprise Partitionable Platform (EPP) within a ClearPath Forward system into a maximum of 36 unique environments – all of which can be dedicated to a variety of Windows or Linux workloads, creating numerous opportunities for advanced integration.

Increasing the number of partitions available within ClearPath Forward also gives you more ways to utilize the deliverables offered under the ClearPath Software Series umbrella. For instance, you could deploy multiple instances of ClearPath MCP Developer Studio and use these unique development environments to stage different MCP releases, test application updates, or provide individual development resources to your team – all without investing in additional hardware.

Redefining the Mainframe

The launch of ClearPath Forward would have been impossible if weren’t for the tremendous strides we made over the last several years. Evolving ClearPath systems away from proprietary chipsets and toward an industry-standard, all Intel® foundation laid the groundwork that eventually allowed us to unify the fabric infrastructure.

With ClearPath Forward, we’ve set the stage for a new dimension of possibilities – and in doing so, have actively redefined what it means to be a ClearPath system. Specifically, ClearPath Forward makes them much more open, active participants in today’s data center environments.

They’re hubs of integration that pull together and connect unique workloads within a single system. They help to bridge the gap between virtualized environments. And they make application development a simpler, more cost-efficient process.

But, they do all of this without losing sight of the characteristics that have long helped ClearPath systems stand out from the crowd. Long-established, industry-recognized security, resilience, and availability remain paramount in the ClearPath Forward era. And by uniting these qualities with new innovations, we’ve created a platform that’s purpose built to remain a centerpiece of your IT strategies for years to come.