Unisys looks at three aspects of the cloud for customers: the applications, the data center that will house the applications, and how to tie all the services into a consistent management framework.

Unisys will help enterprises analyze the characteristics of applications to determine whether they should be moved to the cloud and, if so, whether they should be hosted in a public cloud, a private cloud or an internal private cloud. Those decisions will be based on factors such as how mission-critical the application is, what kind of security requirements it has and how much data it produces.

"Doing that methodically helps customers decide 'where do I start with this cloud stuff and which apps should I move,'" he said.

When looking at an enterprise's applications, Unisys will also consider whether it makes sense to rearchitect older applications so they are suitable for the cloud. It will examine the cost to make those changes and the return on that investment.

Once it helps an enterprise determine which applications it wants to move to which type of cloud, Unisys will then help the enterprise closely examine which cloud vendors to use.