Microsoft Corp. has given its Winning Customer Award for outstanding competitive efforts in the High Performance Computing (HPC) category to Unisys Corp. for a database that helps leading Dutch banks better manage their payments products for greater efficiencies.

Unisys was chosen out of an international field of top Microsoft partners for delivering market-leading solutions that highlight the benefits of working on the Microsoft platform.

Unisys was also the winner of the West Region U.S. Partner Field Award for Top Regional Partner in Customer Satisfaction, and was among the finalists in two additional Winning Customer award categories: Global Enterprise Services & Technology Partner as well as Technical Innovation for Mobility Solutions.

Awards were presented in a number of categories, with winners chosen from a pool of more than 1,800 entrants worldwide. Unisys was recognized for its successful implementation of a Microsoftbased solution that resulted in significant benefits to customers. Award winners were required to have implemented solutions involving successful migrations, custom software development or completing customer upgrades that leverage Microsoft technology.

Unisys won this year's award by expertly developing customer solutions that exemplify the benefit of working on the Microsoft platform. Unisys received the award for a comprehensive database implementation at Unisys Payment Services & Solutions (UPSS), a wholly owned subsidiary that archives payment transactions for all leading banks in the Netherlands. The database, called the Digital Interactive Archive System (DIAS), includes more than 22 billion records, representing seven years of banking transaction data, digital images and payment information.

The archive is accessible online and banks query it more than 1,000 times a day in the Netherlands. The system adds more than 12 million new data items on average, with a capacity up to 50 million, and more than 600,000 new digital images per day.

UPSS needed to improve the old data archive system to store and retrieve data faster and more efficiently. At the same time, UPSS and the banks need to plan ahead to better manage payment across product lines (e.g., check, credit, debit, etc.) to address cross-border payments requirements mandated in the move toward a common European payment system as encouraged by the European Community.

Within one year, Unisys designed and deployed the data storage solution using Unisys Payment Information Engine, Unisys ES7000 servers, and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 running on the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system. The benefits of the new solution include better customer service with 99.99 percent availability, reduced physical storage space by 90 percent, and lower costs.

The Unisys Payments Information Engine (PIE) and database provides a common platform for all payment types, providing a strategic view of best operating practices to deploy across product lines to help UPSS and the banks maximize cost efficiencies.

The Unisys solution can access external systems and internal image databases, providing complete payment histories that give banks the visibility throughout their organizations to more intelligently import, capture, store, manage and use information. Using PIE and SQL Server 2000 allows UPSS to scale servers, processors, and disk storage, which will help the company meet growing customer demands. Most queries are processed in three to five seconds, and more complex query times have been reduced from months to hours.

"It is a privilege to recognize Unisys as a winner of this year's Winning Customer Award," said Allison Watson, vice president of the Worldwide Partner Sales and Marketing Group at Microsoft. "It's this level of commitment in delivering highvalue solutions based on the Microsoft platform that enables continued success for us and for our partners. We applaud Unisys for taking advantage of the latest Microsoft products to help customers meet their business goals."

The Winning Customer Award, one of two Microsoft Initiative Award categories, is part of Microsoft's Commercial Software Initiative, which is designed to promote factual dialogue with customers, governments, academia, partners and developers about the value of the commercial software model and the Microsoft Windows integrated software platform.

The Microsoft Partner Program Awards recognize Microsoft Partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions over the past year. Multiple awards are distributed in four categories: Partner of the Year for Technology Innovation, Partner of the Year for Sales and Marketing, the Specialization Excellence Awards and the Microsoft Initiative Awards, which also includes the Customer Experience Award.

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