UNISYS CORP

Founding

Unisys' history dates back to 1873 with E. Remington & Sons and the introduction of the first commercially viable typewriter to use the QWERTY keyboard layout. Over a hundred years later, the company became known as Unisys in 1986 through the merger of mainframe corporations Sperry and Burroughs, with Burroughs buying Sperry for $4.8 billion.

The new company's name was chosen from over 31,000 submissions in an internal competition when Christian Machen submitted the word "Unisys", which was composed of parts of the words "united", "information", and "systems".

The merger was the largest in the computer industry at the time and made Unisys the second-largest computer company with annual revenue of $10.5 billion. W. Michael Blumenthal became CEO and Chairman.

20th century

Soon after the merger, the market for proprietary mainframe-class systems, the mainstream product of Unisys and its competitors such as IBM, saw a decline that continues, at a slower rate, today. Unisys responded by making the strategic decision to shift into high-end servers, including 32-bit processor Windows Servers and information technology (IT) services, such as systems integration, outsourcing, and related technical services, while holding onto the profitable revenue stream from maintaining its installed base of proprietary mainframe hardware and applications.

In 1988, the company acquired Convergent Technologies, creators of Convergent Technologies Operating System (CTOS).

In 1990, Blumenthal resigned. James Unruh, formerly of Memorex and Honeywell, became the new CEO and Chairman after Blumenthal's departure and continued in both roles until 1997, when Larry Weinbach of Arthur Andersen became the new CEO.

21st century

Unisys launched their business process consulting service in 2004. This service called Business Blueprints helped developers create high level models of their own software.

Joseph McGrath served as CEO and President from January 2005, until September, 2008. On October 7, 2008, J. Edward Coleman replaced McGrath as CEO and Chairman.

On November 10, 2008, the company was removed from the S&P 500 index when the market capitalization of the company had fallen below the S&P 500 minimum of $4 billion.

In 2010, Unisys sold its Medicare processing Health Information Management service to Molina Healthcare for $135 million.

On October 6, 2014, after six years as CEO and chairman, Unisys announced that Coleman was stepping down effective December 1, 2014.

In December 2014, Unisys named Peter Altabef as its new president and CEO, replacing J. Edward Coleman. The company also announced that Paul Weaver, who was serving as the interim board chairman, would assume that position on a permanent basis as of January 1, 2015.

In February 2020, SAIC announced plans to acquire Unisys Federal, the company’s federal defense contracting operation, for $1.2 billion. The company’s federal customer list included over a dozen military and civilian agencies. As part of the acquisition, Unisys has a licensing agreement with SAIC to continue providing its software to federal clients.

In June 2020, Australia’s Home Affairs’ biometric identification system, built in part through partnership with Unisys, was launched.

Unisys made several acquisitions in 2021. In June, the company announced the acquisition of Unify Square, which provides software and services which help enterprises manage collaboration and communication platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. In November, Mobinergy, a mobile device management software company, was acquired; and in December, Unisys acquired CompuGain, an Amazon Web Services Advanced Consulting Partner.

In July 2021, Unisys partnered with Vodafone to help the company boost its IT services. The two launched “Vodafone Digital Factory,” and Unisys helped Vodafone clients with technologies like AI, virtual, and augmented reality, and blockchain.

In May 2022, the company joined the Plug and Play Enterprise Tech program. This allowed Unisys to source and partner with technology startups to access and use early-stage emerging technology.

On April 1, 2025, Michael M. Thomson, the company’s president and COO, assumed the position of CEO.