Managing data center disaster recovery in the right way requires highly specialized personnel and creates infrastructure demands and additional costs for an enterprise. These requirements are reason enough for many organizations to consider whether they should handle disaster recovery in-house or utilize a third-party provider. Most enterprises have difficulty setting aside time and staff for training, installation of the hardware/software and testing of a DR system—that takes valuable time away from daily production schedules that can never be made up. Often, these "second-tier" duties get put aside and often are not completed. In addition, different parts of large IT systems may require separate DR hardware-software components, which only add to the company's bottom-line cost and time commitment. Deploying a specialized service provider to handle DR is a viable option for IT managers. SunGard Availability Services, a well-established IT services provider with more than 25,000 customers in some 70 countries, offers some insight into this topic for eWEEK readers.