Sungard Availability Services: Leading IT Environments with Disaster Recovery Plans

Andrew A. Stern, CEO
IT businesses are mired in a muddle of safeguarding their mission-critical applications and data against diverse causes of downtime. While some are confident about their company’s existing disaster recovery (DR) capabilities, many organizations, despite having disaster recovery plans, backup protocols, and communication procedures, remain skeptical about recoverability from crippling disasters. “CIOs need resiliency for their overall business and not just data or IT, testing and keeping up-to-date recovery plans,” begins Andrew A. Stern, CEO, Sungard Availability Services. Along these lines, organizations are implementing cloud computing and virtualization for re-planning, testing and executing their DR strategies in a cost effective and faster fashion. However, the nescience of IT and security executives in leveraging these developments are convoluting their DR efforts. In this scenario, Sungard Availability Services assists organizations to be abreast of the technological advancements for implementing strategic DR plans. The company is a provider of bespoke critical production and recovery services to global enterprise companies for desired business outcomes.

The company’s Recovery-as-a-Service offering ensures that the organizations are not just prepared to recover from outages but also are set and equipped for business resiliency. “Our comprehensive RaaS solution is designed to be flexible to work with complex, hybrid systems based on customers’ needs, addressing a full range of recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTOs/RPOs),” illustrates Stern. With over 35 years of experience in IT recovery best practices, the firm’s recovery service portfolio includes Managed Recovery Program, Cloud Disaster Recovery, and Backup & Data Protection. Sungard AS’ Managed Recovery Program (MRP) focuses on simplifying application recovery in complex IT environments. The service provides with scoping, planning, testing, implementing and operating recovery processes along with addressing needs for skilled IT staff availability, recovery tools, change management and much more.

The firm’s MRP is a combination of best practices, expertise, and advanced recovery tools to deliver confidence in applications recovery. “MRP is differentiated by addressing change management explicitly for each client organization, solving a root cause problem that too often undermines recovery planning,” delineates Stern.


Our comprehensive RaaS solution is designed to be flexible to work with complex, hybrid systems based on customers’ needs


“Organizations working with SunGard AS MRP can expect to avoid surprises in the recovery process which can lead to significant business impacts– and strengthen production operations as part of the package.”

In addition, the MRP solutions encapsulates the benefits of guaranteed recovery through regular testing, cost savings, and enhanced productivity by minimizing the DR workload for its clients’ staff.

Threats, be it a virus, a natural disaster, a machine or a human error, are impactful enough to grind day-to-day operations to a halt and requires a solid recovery plan in place. Addressing the need of backup, Sungard AS ensures data recovery at any given time with its regular testing. The company offers prominent managed hosting services backed by enterprise-class service level agreements as a recovery site for clients.

Over the years, Sungard AS has emerged as the forerunner in the IT services space by assisting customers in solving the most pressing business and IT problems. At one instance, the firm’s was approached by CSG International, provider of business critical software and service solutions for the telecommunications industry, as the client required a system that could avoid data loss and foster quick recovery. Sungard AS assisted CGS to save time by connecting their infrastructure to the required servers quickly. As a result, CGS received formal change management process to ensure up-to-date data and applications strategy.

Having served clients from diverse business verticals, Stern perceives that disaster recovery program is still on the ‘to do’ list for many organizations. As a result, the company looks forward to modify its solution to address the escalating DR needs and expand the market reach. “To assure our customers are inclined towards a better DR position, we will assist them with their recovery testing efforts,” concludes Stern.

Company
Sungard Availability Services

Headquarters
Wayne, PA

Management
Andrew A. Stern, CEO

Description
Provider of critical production and recovery services to global enterprise companies