Unisys Corp marketing manager Peter Greenhill has confirmed that his company will establish a joint venture with the Budapest-based system integrator Sysland Kft (CI No 2,195). The joint venture, which will be known as Unisys Hungary, will be the first Unisys operation with a legal status in the country and will be 55% owned by Sysland. Sysland was formed four years ago as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the state-owned computer firm SZUV Kft, but has since gone private following a management buy-out. As well as acting as Unisys’s partner in the region, Sysland has also localised key software products such as the Uniplex office automation package and the Proteus manufacturing system. Greenhill claims that Sysland and local Unisys staff had already been acting as one mass of people, and argued that the joint venture structure would enable the firm to take advantage of the country’s generous tax concessions to local high technology firms. Greenhill also argued the set-up would enable Unisys to get closer to its customers and claimed Sysland offered experience in systems installation, system development, a nationwide service and support network, and tremendous experience in many different manufacturer’s product lines and software solutions. Unisys recently secured a $57m contract to computerise the head office and over 400 branches of the Hungarian National Savings Bank (OTP Bank). Greenhill argued the contract was the largest that will be struck in the banking sector as financial institutions rush to improve customer service, fend off foreign competitors, and seek efficiency in their utilisation of cash. Greenhill said It’s a difficult project, it’s a complex project, but it’s high-risk if any of the banks don’t embark on a new solution at the moment. The bank has opted to finance the project internally rather than use available World Bank loans; Greenhill commented that in Hungary the World Bank has really been ignored – especially in the banking community.
Nebulous
It’s a difficult thing for us to comment on, but what I’ve heard from the banks themselves are comments about the level of bureaucracy and of so much of the ‘scoring’ mechanism (of World Bank procurement guidelines) coming down to price. Greenhill added: Historically, most World Bank funding was for major construction projects and not for something as difficult to control and nebulous as a combination of software and project management; they tried to apply what was a very good solution for guaranteeing ‘clean’ procurement, but if that means that the purchaser can’t really get to grips with a solution before he buys it then that’s a problem – I don’t know if there is a solution to it. The OTP Bank selected the Unisys A-series mainframe supporting a network of CTOS workstations after a closed tender, in which IBM Corp, Electronic Data Systems Corp, Digital Equipment Corp, Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA and Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG also accepted invitations to participate. The procurement strategy was based around the World Bank model, but weightings were changed, and in particular the emphasis attached to price was down-graded. Other active players in the Hungarian banking sector include Compagnie des Machines Bull SA and DEC. A $6m contract awarded to Bull by the Budapest Bank in 1990 was not implemented in its originally planned form, though Bull has since supplied the bank with automatic teller machines. Meanwhile, Computergram understands that the Magyar Hitel Bank has embarked on an informal review of its computer procurement policies while DEC continues to conduct a feasibility study into a $25m project to automate its operations, for which it is said to have tendered a high-level language-based software development environment.
