In the News 

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Disaster Recovery Journal
By - Bill Hughes

No two organizations are the same. Each has unique objectives, challenges and opportunities and thus needs solutions that fit it exactly. Where most organizations are the same, however, is in their desire to focus the right level of effort in the right area at the right time-- to ensure that expanding limited resources brings the most benefits. If an organization wants to "laser focus" on the most optimal solution it needs to understand what the threats are that are challenging to its survival, what the organization's capabilities are and where they want to be.

Five Key Considerations for Disaster Recovery Planning
It Business Edge
By - Brian Turley

A recent survey, commissioned by SunGard Availability Services and conducted by Harris Interactive, found that disaster recovery planning is a priority for many organizations. Eighty-six percent of IT executives said they have a disaster recovery plan in place at their organization. While the economy has impacted IT budgets overall, 43 percent of IT respondents indicated the economy has not impacted their disaster recovery investment (including planning) - with another 33 percent saying investment in disaster recovery has become more important.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Strategies for Natural Disasters
SearchDisasterRecovery
By - Matt Bolch

The key to an effective disaster recovery plan for natural disasters on a limited budget is to conduct a risk assessment, focusing on those scenarios most likely to impact your business, said William Hughes, director, consulting services BC/DR Center of Excellence at SunGard Availability Services.

Data Builds Out in a Perfect Match
Information Management
By - Jim Ericson

The best partnerships in business and technology are often those where growth meets growth. Such is the case with two very unlike companies: global shipping/logistics provider BDP International and its data center and service partner SunGard Availability Services, a key subsidiary of Fortune 500 SunGard Data Systems.

--Case study with SunGard Availability Services and BDP International

Managing the H1N1 Crisis
Redmond Channel Partner
By - Joanna L. Krotz

"A pandemic event is unlike any technology disaster," pointed out Bill Hughes, director of consulting services at SunGard Availability Services, an IT solutions provider based in Wayne, Pa. "Systems will continue running although there may be a degradation of performance over time as maintenance and infrastructure weaknesses develop owing to a lack of preventive maintenance and on-site support staff."

Building On The Recovery
Processor Magazine
By - Sixto Ortiz

Another key technology trend involves the use of modular design for data center construction. Dr. Mickey S. Zandi, a data center and information availability expert and consultant with Sungard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com), says organizations today are taking a more budget-friendly approach by designing and building data centers in modularized phases. This approach, he adds, allows organizations to address their current needs and then add space and capacity as requirements change over time.

BCM: Some Lead, While Others Follow
Information Management Magazine
By - Steve Kokol

What motivates an organization to adopt a business continuity program? Why do some organizations lead while others follow in this important discipline? Why do some companies build a sophisticated, mature business continuity management program while others simply skim the surface regarding business continuity program? These and other questions related to BCM are driven by a number of factors including standards and regulations as well as organizational and human factors.

--Article authored by Steve Kokol, Vice President of International Sales, SunGard Availability Services

D.C.-Area Executives Plan Ahead for Swine Flu Outbreak
Washington Business Journal
By - Jennifer Nycz-Conner

Later this month, the firm will participate in a tabletop exercise led by SunGard Availability Services LP, an information technology and disaster preparedness company based in Wayne, Pa.

In the exercise, executives will be asked to work through a surprise scenario that will limit the law firm’s ability to function. How do you get people to work if Metro is shut down? Do you have everyone’s ZIP codes to run possible car pool lists?

PCI DSS Update Could Include Virtualization Security
DarkReading
By - Kelly Jackson Higgins

Among some of technical issues are segmentation of the network, encryption, how having virtualization or not will affect PCI compliance, says Richard Rees, security solutions director for SunGard Availability Services, and a contributor to the PCI virtualization working group. "Answering questions such as are all virtual machines on the same hypervisor as cardholder data VMs in scope; 'does virtualization violate the 'one primary function per server' tenet; and do virtual switches and virtual security appliances truly segment virtual environments on the same hypervisor, are all things we are looking to the PCI Council, technical working group, and virtualization SIG to help answer," Rees says. "At this point, that's open to the interpretation of each QSA.”

PCI Virtualization SIG Closer to Proposing Changes to Standard
SeachSecurity
By - Robert Westervelt

The PCI Virtualization Special Interest Group is trying to find consensus before proposing ways to add the technology to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). The group is meeting this week at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, where the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) is holding its North American Community meeting. The Virtualization SIG consists of certified quality security assessors, auditors, vendors, merchants and banks. In this interview, Richard Rees, security solution director at SunGard Availability Services and member of the Virtualization SIG, explains some of the challenges ahead for the group and how PCI DSS could soon address virtualization.

Five Key Considerations in Disaster Recovery Planning
Continuity Central
By - Staff

Advice for those new to the subject from SunGard Availability Services:
Business and technology environments are more complex than ever and the reliance on information technology is firmly entrenched in the success factors of most organizations. Being prepared to respond to situations - both planned and unexpected - that threaten to disrupt essential business systems and processes, is a major corporate concern.

Mobile Workers & the Web Snarl DR Plans
Internet Evolution
By - Mary E. Shacklett

“The home-based and mobile workers change the dynamics of disaster recovery,” says Bill Hughes, a director of consulting services for DR service provider SunGard Availability Services. “Many businesses think that they can simply send people home during a disaster, and that these people can continue to work.”

Five Steps To Improving Business Continuity
Continuity e-GUIDE
By - Brian Turley

Now is the time for organizations to re-examine their business continuity plans. By doing so, they can reduce the downside risk of interrupted business processes and prepare to utilize the upside potential and competitive advantage of continuous operations.

-- Written by: Brian Turley, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Software Solutions, SunGard Availability Services

Ready For Regulation?
Processor
By - Jean Thilmany

The Green Grid (www.thegreengrid.org) is also a good resource for following pending legislation, says Steve Buckus, vice president of operations recovery services at SunGard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com). The Green Grid is a consortium of IT companies looking to improve energy efficiency in data centers. As such, the organization is good about keeping members up-to-date on how energy regulation might affect them, Buckus says.

When Space Becomes Scarce
Processor
By - Christian Perry

Dr. Mickey S. Zandi, Ph.D., managing principal of SunGard Availability Services’ Consulting Group (www.availability.sungard.com), recommends that data centers remove all noncritical components from the data center, including printers, copiers, and any storage spaces. Further, he says that office spaces can be remotely relocated, and data center support staff should be relocated to office space outside of the data center with remote access.

Online Backup Provider, SunGard, to Demonstrate New Business Continuity Solutions
Online Backup Review
By - Staff

At a time when the H1N1 flu outbreak has brought the need for business continuity and pandemic planning to the forefront, SunGard Availability Services will gather with CIOs, IT professionals and crisis management leaders to discuss the importance of business continuity at one of the world's largest business continuity/disaster recovery conferences, DRJ Fall World 2009. The conference will take place on September 13-16, 2009 in San Diego, Calif.

Not just W.Va.: Government a growing target for scammers, experts say
Charleston Gazette
By - Alison Knezevich

Experts say West Virginia is part of a growing trend nationwide. Over the past few years, cyber crime activity has tripled, said Jim Grogan, vice president at SunGard Availability Services in Wayne, Pa. Scammers pursue government agencies because of their constant interaction with the public and the enormous amount of information they store.

It's usually an organized effort and is often hosted overseas, he said. Many of today's scams use electronic means to carry out age-old methods of fraud, such as payment diversions.

Planning for People in Disaster Preparedness
Data Center Journal
By - Kim Skratsky

When I speak with individuals from other companies regarding business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) planning, I like to ask, “What is your objective for having a BC/DR plan?” Common answers given are “To keep systems up and running through a crisis” or “To restore business operations by recovering and restoring systems.” It is interesting that most answers clearly point to the fact that, to date, the focus of planning has centered around protecting the data center and the systems assets within it – first and foremost.

-- Written by Kim Skratsky, director of product management for SunGard Availability Services

SunGard Builds Grid From DR Workstations
Data Center Knowledge
By - Rich Miller

As a disaster recovery specialist, Sungard Availability Services has an armada of workstations in its facilities for that “what if” moment, ready to provide an instant operations center in the event a disaster affects a client. But what about the rest of the time?

Video Primer on Disaster Recovery Planning Best Practices
Continuity Central
By - Staff

SunGard Availability Services has published a video resource which highlights the main aspects of disaster recovery planning best practices. It covers:
- The importance of a good DR plan
- The biggest IT challenges
- Key players in creating your plan
- Two steps to an effective plan
- Updating your plan
- Testing your plan
- Working with service providers
- DR is more than just IT
Go to http://ow.ly/krfo to view.

Seven Tips to Make the Value Case for Disaster Recovery
SearchCIO
By - Linda Tucci

"You can't focus on everything, given the economic constraints," said Bill Hughes, director of consulting services at SunGard Availability Services LP. Do you really need to have a clustered environment in your recovery environment? Or 10 Web servers? A risk assessment will help CIOs focus on what they absolutely need to mitigate the core risk and, if necessary, defer the rest. Hurricanes sound scary, Hughes said, but if you have certain preventive risk controls, what is the chance of the hurricane impacting you? Business resiliency is a preventive risk control.

Outsourcing Disaster Recovery Services for SMBs: DR for the Masses
SeachSMBStorage
By - Sandra Gittlen

Some SMBs that have high risk and demanding RTOs, such as banks or online retailers, sign on with high-end disaster recovery providers that offer server collocation, service-level agreements and other enterprise-class services. "According to the 2007 Best's Underwriting Guide, only 6% of companies that suffer catastrophic data loss survive, while 43% never re-open and 51% close within two years of the disaster," said Jim Olson, vice president of solutions engineering and training at SunGard Availability Services.

Growing A Data Center On A Budget
Processor Magazine
By - William Van Winkle

SunGard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com) is one of the largest IT services companies, but even SunGard notes that enterprises feeling a resource pinch should not offload all or even most of their data center needs to a provider. Mickey Zandi, Ph.D., managing principal of consulting services at SunGard, advises existing resource consolidation before anything else, and only then, if power and cooling resources still prove insufficient, should mission-critical systems be offloaded to a services provider.

Top 10 Tips for a successful Data Center Migration project
Data Center Journal
By - Staff

Companies that consider a technology migration as a “planned disaster” are starting the project off on the right foot.  There are many parallel best practices between establishing an effective business continuity plan in case of a disaster and managing a major migration project.  SunGard Availability Services recommends enterprises consider the following top 10 tips to keep their migration projects on track and to help minimize the business impact of the move.

-- Article by Mickey Zandi, Ph.D., Availability Consulting Services for SunGard Availability Services

Virtualization Makes Disaster Recovery Cheaper
Enterprise Storage Forum
By - John P. Mello Jr.

"We've leveraged virtualization in a shared pool model to take advantage of the good things about virtualization, but in a way that helps minimize the cost of a secondary data center," said Don Norbeck, SunGard's director of product strategy and virtualization technology officer.

Identify The Top Web Threats To Your Enterprise
Processor Magazine
By - Robyn Weisman

Internet access requires a host of devices, such as routers, switches, and firewalls, to route Internet traffic and defend networks. If these devices are not properly installed, hackers can exploit weaknesses caused by these configurations to access and steal information, says Christopher Burgher, associate principal of availability services consulting at SunGard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com).

FMS Solutions selects Secure2Disk online backup and recovery from SunGard
SearchDataBackup
By - Staff

FMS Solutions Inc., an accounting and consulting service provider to independent retail grocers, has selected SunGard Availability Services' Secure2Disk to provide online backup and recovery services. FMS is deploying SunGard's Secure2Disk to support critical business applications including accounting, payroll, reporting tools and email. SunGard will also provide recovery services for FMS' IBM iSeries and Intel servers, which will allow information to be restored to a SunGard recovery environment if an outage occurs.

Disaster Recovery Services Options for Smaller Businesses on a Budget
Search CIO Midmarket
By - Linda Tucci

For companies that can stomach that RTO, buying standard recovery services at a secondary site is "a perfectly viable" option, said Jim Olson, vice president, solutions engineering and training at SunGard Availability Services. SunGard's monthly fees for Intel servers can range from $100 to several thousand dollars, depending on the number and type of Intel servers, Olson said.

The Essentials of Disaster Recovery
CS Techcast Podcast
By - Staff

This week the focus is on disaster recovery; the planning, the technology, and what you should be doing with Don Norbeck, Technology Officer of Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Product Strategy at SunGard. Find more information at www.availability.sungard.com. In the news we discuss Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 going RTM, Yahoo's further discussion about some sort of Microsoft deal, IT is shown to be failing in 25% of small businesses, and a zero-day vulnerabilities found in Adobe's Flash player. The EU's strange requirement of a menu of browsers for Windows 7 gets "The Worst Tech of the Week", we take "A Closer Look" at Hyper-V 2.0, and a pointer about Remote Desktop Protocol getting cutoff during a Forefront installation in "The Weekly Tech Tip".

-- Interview with Don Norbeck, Technology Officer of Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Product Strategy at SunGard Availability Services

SunGard Availability Services, Phoenix Health Systems Join Forces
Disaster Recovery Journal (Not available online)
By - Staff

SunGard Availability Services has partnered with Phoenix Health Systems, a national provider of healthcare IT outsourcing, consulting and revenue cycle management solutions, to help hospitals improve information availability for electronic medical records (EMR) and other technologies essential to quality of care.  Together, SunGard and Phoenix will help community hospitals by developing and executing cost-effective business continuity plans that address requirements to access critical data in the event of an IT systems outage as well as providing industry leading staffing and application support.

Tech Data Offers VARs SunGard Managed Backup and Recovery Services
MSPmentor
By - John Moore

Business continuity services continue to be a hot ticket in the managed services market. The latest example: Tech Data Corp. resellers will be able to provide SunGard Availability Services’ managed backup and disaster recovery offerings under a new distribution agreement between the firms.

Refreshing Your Servers Leads to Data Center Energy Savings
IDG Accelerate
By - Sandra Gittlen

“It may be tempting to delay a server refresh because the cost seems high compared to older platforms and standard configurations, but that is deceptive and leads to the misuse of energy resources,” says Mickey S. Zandi, Ph.D, managing principal at SunGard Availability Services' Consulting Group, in Wayne, Pa.

SunGard Exec Says Storage will be ‘Final Domino’ in Cloud Interoperability
SearchStorage
By - Beth Pariseau

SS: What kinds of things will the incubator be defining? What does it have to do with SunGard’s disaster recovery business?

Norbeck: Our first hypothesis is that there are going to be hundreds of different clouds out there with different characteristics - some optimized for speed, some for cost and some for availability. The cloud will serve two purposes: avoiding downtime and the expansion of infrastructure for peak demand. How much capacity you can spin up and how quickly you can fail over to a cloud data center depends on an up-front information exchange between the end user and the provider to tell how much and what to spin up for true application portability.

-- Q&A with Director Product Strategy, Virtualization Technology Officer at SunGard Availability Services, Don Norbeck

Tips for Improving Information Availability
Byte and Switch
By - Mike Fratto

"Today's competitive, regulated, and economically stressed marketplace means businesses may be living on a razor's edge where they have to meet increased demands with decreasing resources," said Bill Hughes, director of SunGard Availability Services' Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Center of Excellence. "Organizations must focus on understanding the full spectrum of technology risks to key business processes and the challenges they create in order to make informed decisions regarding mitigation, acceptance or deferral of risk."

H1N1 Pandemic: Preparing for the Second Wave Fall Flu Season May Put Business Continuity Plans to the Test
Bank Info Security
By - Linda McGlasson

"Unfortunately, it remains a question unanswered, because most institutions' plans are confidential and stay within the institution," says SunGard's Jim Grogan, Vice President, Consulting & Software, and a pandemic planning expert. "But just like so many aspects of plans in [business continuity planning], the validity of those plans is only known when they've been tested."

SunGard Availability Services launches Storage Optimization Service
Continuity Central
By - Staff

With the goal of a proactive and efficient data center in mind, SunGard Availability Services' consulting practice has developed a five-step storage optimization service that helps organizations reclaim valuable storage capacity while meeting their information availability goals.

Calling IT to Action for Disaster Recovery Planning
ZDnet
By - Patrick Doherty, executive vice president and chief marketing officer

These survey results show IT and business decision-makers really want the same things – to avoid lost productivity and negative impact on customer satisfaction that can result from unplanned outages. But there is a meaningful gap between these groups on how to achieve that goal.

Automation Tools to Drive Cloud Computing Journey
ServerWatch
By - Amy Newman

Don Norbeck, technology officer for virtualization, cloud computing and product strategy SunGard Availability Services, told ServerWatch that the study found virtualization to have moved from being accepted in test and dev to being deployed for applications where it was well suited, to being considered for deployment for all applications except for those where it is unsuitable.

Industry Pulse: BDP Int'l. Selects SunGard to Provide Managed Hosting for Global Data Center
Disaster Resource e-GUIDE
By - Staff

BDP International, a leading global logistics and transportation management organization, has selected SunGard Availability Services to provide AdvancedHosting managed services to help ensure worldwide, uninterrupted access to its corporate information systems. SunGard will host BDP's Global Data Center - the organization's primary suite of IT infrastructure hardware and software applications - in its new managed services facility in Philadelphia.

ERP SaaS: Three Moves Worth Noting
MSPmentor
By - John Moore

SunGard had been offering SAP services prior to certification. The company formalized its managed SAP services offering in January 2007, according to Janel Ryan, product manager at SunGard Availability Services. SunGard acquired a company a few years ago that extends its experience in managing SAP environments dating back to 1998.

Will Cap and Trade Policy Devastate Data Centers?
AFCOM
By - Gail Dutton

However, data centers need not be new to realize cost-effective physical changes.  When SunGard Availability Services, headquartered in Wayne, Pa., undertook an outside energy audit of its suburban Chicago and Atlanta data centers, it received numerous recommendations, according to Robert Salvatore, director of infrastructure compliance and green initiatives.  SunGard is implementing some of those recommendations now.  If they are as effective as expected, Salvatore predicts they will be applied in SunGard's more than 65 U.S. facilities.

SAP Certifies SunGard as a Hosting Partner in US
Web Hosting Info
By - Staff

SunGard Availability Services, a provider of disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software, has been certified by SAP AG today, to provide hosting services for SAP applications and is now an SAP hosting partner in the U.S. The company says that the certification was awarded following an assessment of its infrastructure, procedures and technical staff by SAP. As a SAP hosting partner and an SAP-certified provider of hosting services, it avers that its services are in line with SAP's requirements for quality, availability and security.

Virtualization and Disaster Recovery: Survey Results
Continuity Central
By - Staff

In the survey, commissioned by SunGard Availability Services, 74 percent of IT respondents indicate that virtualization can play a major role but is not a total solution for disaster recovery plans. One-quarter of IT respondents say they would never include virtualization technologies in their disaster recovery plans.

Disaster Recovery News Briefs: SunGard Survey Says Virtualization has a Role in Disaster Recovery
Searchdisasterrecovery
By - Staff

A new survey "The 2009 State of Disaster Recovery" commissioned by SunGard Availability Services and conducted by Harris Interactive said virtualization can play a major role in disaster recovery. Seventy-four percent of IT respondents said virtualization has a role in DR, but it's not a total solution for disaster recovery plans. One-quarter of IT respondents said they would never include virtualization technologies in their disaster recovery plans.

Survey of IT Execs: Virtualization No Panacea for Data Recovery
eWeek
By - Chris Preimesberger

"The Achilles heel of many virtualized IT environments is they depend on a single data center to execute system failover should an outage occur," said Don Norbeck, technology officer at SunGard Availability Services. "A recovery strategy with no off-site data center can result in no recovery."

Business Executives Don't Tie Disaster Recovery Efforts to Business Success, Study Reveals
Enterprise Systems Journal
By - James Powell

Commissioned by SunGard Availability Services and performed by Harris Interactive, the survey found that although 83 percent IT decision-makers (of 220 qualified respondents) and 78 percent of business decision-makers (of 277 respondents) acknowledge the importance of information availability to business success, only 74 percent of IT executives and 49 percent of business executives say disaster recovery and business continuity are similarly important.

SunGard customer win: managed hosting for a managed data center
Tier1Research
By - Antonio Piraino

Managed hoster and colocation provider SunGard Availability Services has landed a large managed hosting deal in the form of BDP International, a global logistics and transportation management organization. SunGard will provide BDP with what it calls AdvancedHosting, or what others might term a hybrid hosting approach, for BDP's Global Data Center.

Survey Highlights Disconnect Between IT and Business Executives When it Comes to Business Continuity and DR
Continuity Central
By - Staff

“The survey shows IT and business decision-makers really want the same things – to avoid lost productivity and negative impact on customer satisfaction that can result from unplanned outages,” said Patrick Doherty, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at SunGard Availability Services. “But there is a meaningful gap between these groups on how to achieve that goal. It is largely because the business is not connecting the requirement to keep core IT systems and applications available with overall company success. IT systems are still viewed as a ‘black box’ to many business executives, especially when it comes to the dependency between systems that impact overall availability.”

IT Management Slideshow: Business and IT Disagree on Disaster Recovery
CIO Insight
By - Staff

In a poll of IT executives and line-of-business leaders, a recent "State of Disaster Recovery" survey found that each group still has its own ideas about business continuity. Conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of SunGard Availability Services, results show what IT workers are up against when it comes to advocating disaster recovery activities.

Projects: Disaster Recovery Slideshow: Business and IT Disagree on Disaster Recovery
Baseline
By - Staff

In a poll of IT executives and line-of-business leaders, a recent "State of Disaster Recovery" survey found that each group still has its own ideas about business continuity. Conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of SunGard Availability Services, results show what IT workers are up against when it comes to advocating disaster recovery activities.

Focusing On Budget Cuts
Securities Industry News
By - Katherine Heires

Donald Hopkins of SunGard Availability Services said that his presentation would "take a deeper dive into how to reduce costs with a little twist," combining thrifty strategies for disaster recovery efforts with overall cost reduction efforts and advised that attendees at Sifma also need to identify "breakthrough strategies" for better technology management. "Cost reductions can become very addictive," he says, "where you end up always thinking about the next 15 percent to cut." His June 24 presentation will offer breakthrough solutions, such as the use of de-duplication technology as part of one's disaster recovery plan--a technique that removes any duplicate data prior to compression and thus, Hopkins argues, can result in significant savings.

SunGard Provides Hosting to BDP International
Web Host Industry Review
By - David Hamilton

According to SunGard's Thursday announcement, BDP will be using SunGard's AdvancedHosting, delivered at its newly opened managed services facility in Philadelphia, which combines a redundant backbone network with secure, always available hosting facilities and equipment.

SunGard Launches Secure2Disk
Continuity Central
By - Staff

Secure2Disk from SunGard Availability Services delivers a new disk-based, online backup and recovery solution for organizations looking to improve the reliability of both operational backup and off-site recovery of their IT systems. Before the data is transmitted to SunGard’s secure storage facility, Secure2Disk de-duplicates the data to reduce network bandwidth and storage consumption, and encrypts the information before it leaves the customer’s data center to help ensure security. Only the customer has access to its information. Customers can monitor the status of the Secure2Disk environment and restore any files on a 24/7 basis.

SunGard Launches Secure2Disk Online Backup Solution
IT Jungle
By - Alex Woodie

What separates SunGard's new Secure2Disk offerings from these VTLs and D2D systems is SunGard's expertise in disaster recovery services, and its considerable investment in data centers, servers, and personnel. Instead of requiring a customer to move its data offsite and have a second data center that can support the customer in the event of a disaster--or to provision new servers and office space on short notice--the use of SunGard's facilities and personnel is part and parcel of the Secure2Disk offering. In that respect, Secure2Disk is very different from your basic VTL offering.

Recent Announcements From:
InfoStor
By - Staff

SunGard Availability Services is now offering a disk-based, online backup and recovery service dubbed SunGard Secure2Disk. Secure2Disk backs data up to an onsite SunGard appliance, which be used as an online and off-site vault to protect information. Before the data is transmitted to SunGard, Secure2Disk deduplicates the data to reduce network bandwidth and storage consumption, and encrypts the information before it leaves the customer's datacenter.

Firm Moves From Tape Backup to Managed Backup and Recovery Service
SearchCIO
By - Linda Tucci

Having an appliance at the local site -- a feature not offered by all providers -- gives the ability to back up and restore data at land speed, instead of over the Internet, Couture said. A second copy is stored far away. Vendors like IBM have realized that they can turn their off-site storage services into disaster recovery services by adding a recovery option. And just yesterday, the SunGard Availability Services unit of SunGard Data Systems Inc. announced Secure2Disk, a new disk-based, online backup and recovery service that also offers an on-premise appliance.

SunGard Secure2Disk Provides Online Backup and Recovery Services
Byte and Switch
By - Paul Travis

Protecting business information from routine incidents, such as hardware and power outages, viruses, accidental deletions and application failures, as well as ensuring that information is available despite natural disasters is a continuous challenge for IT organizations. Secure2Disk from SunGard Availability Services delivers a new disk-based, online backup and recovery solution for organizations looking to improve the reliability of both operational backup and off-site recovery of their IT systems.

Vendor Notebook
HealthcareITNews
By - Eric Wicklund

SunGard Availability Services of Wayne, Pa., has announced a partnership with Phoenix Health Systems, a national provider of healthcare IT outsourcing, consulting and revenue cycle management solutions, to deliver complete software applications and infrastructure management for community hospitals.

Improving Business Continuity with SunGard
Virtual Strategy Magazine
By - Carryl Roy and Richard Engstrom

In this podcast VSM speaks with Richard Engstrom, product manager at SunGard Availability Services, about maintaining information availability and improving business continuity.

SunGard Builds SaaS Connections
MSPmentor
By - John Moore

SunGard Availability Services is cultivating business among software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers. This week, the company reported HarrisData as a new customer for its managed services, and more deals seem to be pending. Here’s a quick look at the SaaS strategy.

HarrisData Taps SunGard for Hosting Services
SearchDataCenter
By - Bridget Botelho

HarrisData now uses SunGard Availability Services for managed hosting of its enterprise software applications for HarrisData customers, the companies reported Monday.

HarrisData Teams Up with SunGard for Hosting
IT Jungle
By - Alex Woodie

SunGard officials are also in Brookfield this week for the conference. Biff Myre, director of availability solutions for SunGard Availability Services, was scheduled to present a session on iSeries high availability strategies yesterday. "SunGard has extensive experience in addressing the information availability and recovery needs of iSeries customers," Myre says in a press release.

Ten Ways to Save on Data Storage Costs
Enterprise Storage Forum
By - Drew Robb

Storage vendors are willing to deal like never before, so shop around for surprise deals and you might get lucky. For instance, until June 30, SunGard Availability Services is holding a special offer of up to $15,000 for its AdvancedHosting enterprise managed services and colocation solutions. This offer is available at SunGard's facilities in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Toronto and New York. What this means is that if you sign up, they either waive setup fees up to $15,000 or get one month's complimentary service up to that value. Variations of this apply to new or existing customers.

The Case for Continuity Management Software
BusinessWeek
By - Tracey Forbes, vice-president, product development, SunGard Availability Services

No one can control whether or not an organization will be affected by a natural disaster, hardware failure, power outage, or other unplanned incident. But companies can prepare to respond to and recover from such events with minimal impact by creating and keeping business continuity plans. Business continuity management (BCM) software can help with this. Consider how you might use it.

IT Management Slideshow: Eleven Ways IT Can Prepare for a Pandemic
CIO Insight
By - Staff

As fears of a Swine Flu pandemic grow, issues of business and IT continuity come into focus.  This slideshow information comes from SunGard Availability Services.

Jive's Temporary Cloud Offering
InformationWeek
By - Andrew Conry-Murray

"We have a script that lets you grab the entire instance and deploy it wherever you want: it sets up the database and application to your on-premises server or to our hosted infrastructure, which is hosted by SunGard," says Cameron Deatsch, product director at Jive.

IT Management Slideshow: Nine Steps to Prepare Your Business for a Pandemic
Baseline
By - Staff

As fears of a Swine Flu pandemic grow, you need to make sure your organization is ready to deal with business and IT continuity issues.    A slideshow with 9 tips of content provided by SunGard Availability Services.

6 Steps for Weathering Outbreaks and Food Scares
SmartMoney
By - Diana Ransom

Airlines, hotels and other tourism-focused businesses are already seeing a falloff in sales as swine flu cases continue to pop up in Mexico and parts of the U.S., says Jim Grogan, vice president of consulting product development at SunGard Availability Services, a disaster recovery firm in Wayne, Pa. The World Health Organization raised its pandemic threat level to 4 from 3 Monday, just two levels shy of a full-blown pandemic. Meanwhile, health officials at the U.S. State Department and Centers for Disease Control in the U.S warned against nonessential travel to Mexico. And the European Union urged its citizens to postpone nonessential travel to the U.S. and Mexico.

SunGard Upgrades Scottsdale Data Center
Phoenix Business Journal
By - Patrick O'Grady

SunGard Availability Services has upgraded its Scottsdale data center to handle more recovery solutions.  The Wayne, Pa.-based managed services company upgraded its 102,000-square-foot facility to provide for better services to specific industry customers, such as health care, said Frank Szalontay, senior director of operations for the company’s Western U.S. region.

Is IT ready for a pandemic after mergers, layoffs?
ComputerWorld
By - Patrick Thibodeau

While the CDC figures out just what it is dealing with, Jim Grogan, a vice president at SunGard Availability Services LP, is recommending that managers review their call lists and decision-making chains.

"There could be a weakness in plans because of organizational restructuring that people need to very quickly take a look at," he said.

Grogan also said that if someone does not have a specific pandemic plan, any plan that considers a "significant absence" of employees may work as an alternative plan.

Writing Winning IT Plans in a Recession
CIO Update
By - Robert McGarvey

The last, crucial step in building a winning IT plan, said Mark Stoecklein, senior director in the Technology Solutions Practice at SunGard Availability Services, is to tie every new expenditure back to provable returns. “ROI is the big driver today. You can spend money if it will save you money or make you money and CFOs will double-check your claims."

Is Your Firm Disaster Proof?
Printing News
By - Staff

Jim Olson, vice president of inside sales and solutions engineering at SunGard Availability Services, said his company offers many tips to effective business continuity planning in the event of a disaster. “Companies need to plan for a wide range of scenarios, including fire, flood, hurricane, etc.; owners need to understand their data requirements; employees need to know where to go after the disaster; and you need to test your plan with a mock disaster.”

Vendor Notebook
HealthcareITNews
By - Eric Wicklund

Orchestrate Healthcare, based in Greenwood Village, Colo., is partnering with SunGard Availability Services of Wayne, Pa., to help hospitals develop and execute cost-effective business continuity plans that address the requirement to access EMR data in the event of an IT systems outage to safeguard quality of care.

Top Five Reasons to Utilize Managed IT Services by SunGard
MyHostNews
By - Staff

In today's difficult economic environment, organizations are turning to managed IT services to help them achieve lower and more predictable IT support costs, while also improving IT resiliency and operational efficiencies. Organizations are realizing the advantages of leveraging the investments of managed IT services providers rather than building and managing their own IT infrastructures.  SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of information availability, has outlined the top five reasons to use a managed IT services provider in today's down economy.

Security Clouds: What will security look like in the cloud, and how will it be put together?
WhiteHatWorld
By - Deb Radcliff

In this fragmented landscape, Richard Rees, security director at SunGard Availability Services asks: How do you put all these clouds together, particularly in a way that’s SAS 70 compliant, so that security data is accessible upon demand? SunGard, based in Wayne, Penn., is a $5 billion IT infrastructure, application services and processing provider for financial, educational and public sector applications that includes security applications in its offerings.

SunGard Developing 'LDRPS for Hospitals
Continuity Central
By - Staff

In today’s fast-paced healthcare environment, real-time access to medical information and treatment protocols is required to deliver the highest quality of care. LDRPS (Living Disaster Recovery Planning System) for Hospitals, a new version of the well known LDRPS business continuity management software is being developed by SunGard Availability Services to address the healthcare industry’s unique, 24/7 demands for information availability.

Tabletop Exercises Sharpen Security and Business Continuity
Information Security
By - Michael Mimoso


Lisa Wragg, disaster recovery coordinator for the Delaware DTI, was the project manager for last year's incident response exercise. She lays out seven lessons learned.
# 7. Get an outside agency to assess how you do; SunGard's Incident Management Exercise Service did DTI's assessment.

SunGard Availability Services Intros New Planning Software
TMCnet
By - Anuradha Shukla

SunGard Availability Services will be offering versions of LDRPS for Hospitals with a variety of delivery and functional options. These versions can be scaled to meet the needs of healthcare organizations of all sizes. The company can also host LDRPS for Hospitals at one of its secure data centers located throughout the country.

Health Care IT: 25 Solutions To Check Out At HIMSS
ChannelWeb
By - Staff

SunGard is best known for disaster recovery, but to the HIMSS audience it is opening up a full portfolio of services including business continuity management software, disaster recovery, managed services and consulting. At the forefront is the Living Disaster Recovery Planning System (LDRPS), a solution which combines all of those facets.

Marketing Tool all aTwitter
Philadelphia Business Journal
By - Peter Key

For example, SunGard Availability Services, a Wayne-based provider of computer back-up and recovery services, will use the site to tweet about goings-on at its user conference, which starts April 5 in San Diego.  That will enable Twitter users at the conference to connect with other Twitter users with whom they share common interests, and enable Twitter users who can’t attend the conference to get information from it, said Valeria Maltoni, the company’s director of marketing communications.

SunGard, Orchestrate Unite to Improve EMR Availability
Healthcare Informatics
By - Staff

SunGard Availability Services (Wayne, Pa.) is partnering with Orchestrate Healthcare (Greenwood Village, Colo.), a technical consulting service, to help healthcare organizations improve information availability for EMRs.

SunGard Looks for Growth with New Reseller Program
IT Jungle
By - Alex Woodie

All of SunGard's availability services will be eligible for the reseller program. But Sorice and his team will be rolling out a series of bundled solutions that specifically target resellers. "We will be working with them on a more targeted set of services that are more channel-ready, if you will, such as Virtual Server Replication Service (VSR)," where VMware environments are replicated to other VMware systems at SunGard facilities. "We're offering end-to-end services. We're helping them with failover and failback. Partners are finding that to be an attractive solution for their clients."

SunGard Availability Services Launches New Partner Program
Continuity Central
By - Staff

SunGard Availability Services has unveiled a Business Partner Program designed to help companies generate new revenue sources by offering customers comprehensive availability solutions. Business Partners can expand beyond traditional hardware and software offerings by adding SunGard services to existing portfolios to create an information availability solution practice for their customers.

‘The Future is Now’: SunGard software Business Continuity User Group Conference
Continuity Central
By - Staff

In a continuing effort to provide educational opportunities to business continuity professionals, the 2009 SunGard Availability Services Software International User Group Conference features sessions on building plans, incident management and cyber security. The conference, organized by SunGard Availability Services, will be held in San Diego, Calif. on April 5 – 8, 2009 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego.

The State of the Data Storage Job Market
Enterprise Storage Forum
By - Drew Robb

On the end user side, there is more of a mixed bag. SunGard Availability Services of Wayne, Pa., which provides data protection and collocation facilities to thousands of companies, reports that its customer base is experiencing a headcount loss of as much as 20 percent over the course of 2009.

SunGard Offers Managed Services, Hosting Promotions
SearchDataCenter
By - Bridget Botelho

SunGard Availability Services is trying to attract new customers with a promotional deal for AdvancedHosting enterprise managed services and colocation solutions.  The offer is available at SunGard's managed services facilities in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Toronto and the New York metro area through June 30. New or existing customers that sign a contract for enterprise managed services solutions via SunGard's AdvancedHosting can either waive setup fees for adding or renewing new services -- up to a maximum of $15,000 -- or get one month of complimentary service (also up to $15,000).

Hosting by SunGard, Selected by Jive Software
Web Hosting News
By - Staff

Social business software provider, Jive Software, has selected SunGard Availability Services AdvancedHosting managed IT services, to support its enterprise software suite.

SunGard Managed Services Launches Financial Incentives
MSP Mentor
By - Joe Panettieri

SunGard’s managed services effort extends beyond the east coast. True believers include Jive Software, a Portland, Oregon-based provider of so-called Social Business Software. Jive, which specializes in software as a service (SaaS) on March 3 disclosed plans to leverage SunGard’s managed services.

Jive Software Selects SunGard's Availability Services to Enable SaaS Offering
TMCnet
By - Rajani Baburajan

Jive chose SunGard after realizing its operational excellence in meeting service level agreements. Also, SunGard’s IT infrastructure has the scalability and reliability required to meet Jive’s future demands, officials said.

Storage Admins Cope with Budget Cutbacks
Enterprise Storage Forum
By - Drew Robb

"Customers are asking the hard questions around how they are using their infrastructure and if there is an ability to optimize and re-prioritize," said Stith. "Specifically, organizations want to know if they can rebuild a management strategy for value from an existing infrastructure. They want to know if it is possible to put off buying more storage for a year or more by optimizing what they already have."

-Senior Director of Storage Solutions at SunGard Availability Services, Bill Stith

VMware Outshines Hyper-V, et al. in Hypervisor Comparison
SearchServerVirtualization
By - Bridget Botelho

The fact that Microsoft has yet to release a full-bodied hypervisor comes by no surprise to enterprise users, said Frank Lacomba, the director of product management at SunGard Availability Services, which supports customer virtualization deployments. "Enterprises typically wait until the first service pack, when they get their act together," before adopting Microsoft software, Lacomba said.

VMWare's Confederation of Clouds
Forbes.com
By - Taylor Buley

On Tuesday, VMware CEO Paul Maritz plans to discuss plans to enable "federated clouds" aimed at unifying the pooled resources of both internal IT infrastructure, so-called "virtual private clouds," and external, third-party cloud computing providers including Amazon.com, SunGard and Verizon.

SunGard Opens 3rd Data Center in Philadelphia
Data Center Journal
By - Staff

SunGard Availability Services has opened a third data center in Philadelphia that will provide its customers with IT infrastructure and managed services to help ensure their business systems are always up and running. SunGard has invested $25 million in the new 120,000 square foot facility.

SunGard Availability Services opens $25M data center in Philadelphia
Philadelphia Business Journal
By - Peter Key

Information-technology company SunGard Availability Services said Wednesday it has opened a $25 million, 120,000-square-foot data center in Philadelphia.  The unit of SunGard Data Systems Inc., which shares a Wayne, Pa., headquarters with its parent, has three data centers with 350,000 square feet among them in Philadelphia.

How to Improve Virtualization Security
eWeek
By - Richard Rees

In the rush to implement virtualization technologies, organizations are re-creating the same security mistakes that were made in physical environments over the past two decades. This is happening largely because they have failed to recognize that new technologies create the same risks, albeit from a different perspective. Knowledge Center contributor Richard Rees explains the five steps you need to take to improve virtualization security in your data center.

SunGard Opens Third Center City Data Center
Philadelphia Inquirer
By - Joe DiStefano

SunGard Availability Services, Wayne, has spent $25 million to turn a 123,000-square-foot floor of the old Smith Kline labs and pill factory on Spring Garden St. into its 34th U.S. data and disaster-recovery center, complete with its own redundant diesel power (two 2000-kilowatt diesel generators with city-required catalytic converters and 4,000-gallon tanks), battery rooms, raised floors, security, electronic monitoring and climate control systems.

Six Ways to Save Your IT Project from the Scrap Heap
InfoWorld
By - Dan Tynan

Then, out of the blue, he got a call from SunGard, which offered a free 90-day beta test of its Virtual Server Replication Services. Zwartz jumped at the offer. He says the service worked so well in his tests that he retired the physical servers at the high-availability site and moved his entire disaster-recovery plan to SunGard last October.

Now, with a successful high-availability virtualization project under his belt, Zwartz was able to convince the insurance firm to go virtual at the production site.

-- Interview with Mark Zwartz, Manager of Information Technology, JMB Insurance

Resolving Disaster Recovery Problems
Processor Magazine
By - Carmi Levy

Too many organizations view the DRP as a drag on the bottom line. In doing so, they fail to understand the DRP’s critical contributions to ongoing operations. Jim Grogan, vice president of consulting product development at SunGard Availability Services, says IT is instrumental in helping the rest of the business understand the connection between the DRP and business continuity management.

SunGard Availability Services Completes a Refresh of Recovery Facility Desktop PCs in North America
Continuity Central
By - Staff

SunGard Availability Services has announced that it has completed a refresh of the desktop PCs in its North America recovery facilities. The refresh, completed in late 2008, deployed more than 5,900 new Hewlett-Packard PCs across 29 SunGard workforce continuity services facilities and 41 mobile recovery units. This was the company’s largest upgrade to date.

SunGard Upgrades its North American Workforce Continuity Services Centers
TMCnet
By - Shamila Janakiraman

The configuration for the desktop PC architecture is consistent throughout the workforce continuity services facilities. This provided customers a common platform which is useful in case of an outage or while supporting business users located remotely from multiple SunGard locations. SunGard also provided an imaging service for simplifying and reducing desktop PC recovery times. This enables customers to restore many desktop PCs easily.