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June 26, 2009


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.


June 26, 2009


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.


June 25, 2009


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."


June 23, 2009


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.

June 17, 2009


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.

June 16, 2009


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.

June 16, 2009


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.

June 16, 2009


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.”

June 15, 2009


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.

June 11, 2009


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.

June 09, 2009


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.

June 09, 2009


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.

June 09, 2009


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.

June 04, 2009


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.

June 03, 2009


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.

May 29, 2009


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.

May 22, 2009


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.

May 20, 2009


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.

May 19, 2009


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.

May 19, 2009


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.

May 08, 2009


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.

May 04, 2009


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.

May 04, 2009


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.

May 04, 2009


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.

April 30, 2009


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.

April 28, 2009


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.

April 28, 2009


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.



April 24, 2009


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.



April 23, 2009


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."

April 22, 2009


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.”


April 17, 2009


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.

April 14, 2009


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.

April 10, 2009


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.


April 08, 2009


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.


April 07, 2009


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.


April 06, 2009


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.


April 06, 2009


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.


April 03, 2009


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.


April 03, 2009


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.


March 31, 2009


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."


March 24, 2009


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.

March 16, 2009


‘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.

March 16, 2009


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.

March 10, 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).

March 10, 2009


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.

March 09, 2009


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.

March 03, 2009


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.

February 26, 2009


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


February 26, 2009


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.


February 24, 2009


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.

February 19, 2009


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.

February 18, 2009


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.

February 18, 2009


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.

February 17, 2009


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.

February 07, 2009


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

February 06, 2009


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.

January 30, 2009


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.

January 30, 2009


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.

January 06, 2009


How to Ensure IT Resiliency During an Economic Downturn: The Top 10 Questions Your Company Needs to Ask Itself
Disaster Resource Guide
By - William DiMartini, VP of Consulting Operations at SunGard Availability Services

During this period of economic uncertainty, many organizations are looking at ways to reduce costs, while continuing stability and growth. Information technology expenditures are not exempt from this and are typically the first area to be scrutinized. Consequently, costs to maintain critical information availability programs, including business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR), are being identified for possible cuts.

January 06, 2009


21st Century Power and Cooling Pandemic
Disaster Recovery Journal
By - Dr. Mickey Zandi, managing principal for SunGard Availability Services Consulting Group

There is a perfect storm brewing in IT – fuel costs are rising exponentially, business managers are looking for ways to cut costs to address current economic conditions, and IT departments are being asked to provide higher levels of availability than ever before with flat or even shrinking IT budgets.

January 01, 2009


Disaster Recovery Site Options
Storage Magazine
By - Jacob Gsoedl

"We have tried to put together a TCO tool, but data centers are too different and our DR options are so customized that it's very difficult to come up with a cost calculator," says David Palermo, vice president of marketing at SunGard Availability Services.

December 28, 2008


BC/DR Advice for SMBs
InfoStor
By - Dave Simpson

Many small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) still have ineffective (or non-existent) business continuity plans. However, it is imperative that SMBs recognize and plan for potential risks. Here are five steps to consider when you are developing a BC plan.

December 20, 2008


CIO Values: Donald H. Hopkins, SunGard Availability Services
InformationWeek
By - Interview with Don Hopkins, VIP and CIO at SunGard Availability Services

Top three initiatives:
  • Implementing an enterprise data warehouse from Teradata (NYSE: TDC).
  • Migrating the current Oracle ERP platform to release 12, and simplifying processes to let us be much quicker in responding to customer needs.
  • Migrating our disaster recovery to more advanced disk-based technology to ensure we're a good business model for our recovery services business.


  • December 15, 2008


    IT Security: Risk Management in the Digital Age - Securing the Vault
    Wall Street Journal
    By - Russ Banham

    According to SunGard Availability Services, technology risks can be broken down into three categories: natural threats like a hurricane that shut down systems or prevent access to data to continue business; accidental threats, in which an employee unintentionally obtains improper access to verboten data; and intentional threats, the wide array of illegal scans, probes and attempted accesses via malicious code. The latter is the most threatening. “We live in a digital world via the Internet, and its access channels have also evolved to where the Web is a platform for services like social networking and sophisticated information sharing. This drives a higher degree of interaction,” explains Deepak Batheja, chief technology officer and SVP-Products.

    December 11, 2008


    The Vagaries of Disaster Recovery, cont’d
    SearchStorage
    By - Beth Pariseau

    Of course, without a fully staffed and replicated secondary environment, Zwartz acknowledged, it’s impossible to be disaster-proof. But the incident also had a silver lining when it came to convincing management to participate in the new SunGard program. “It would’ve cost $1,500 to get a new backup device,” he said. “It wound up taking six weeks to get one contact back and cost between $15,000 and $20,000. It was a selling point when it came to virtual servers with SunGard.”

    December 09, 2008


    From Business Continuity to IT Cost-Cutting in a Fortune 1000 Company
    Enterprise Leadership (Podcast)
    By - Host: Tom Parish

    In this podcast, Hopkins talks about how he has translated his IT experiences at NCR and applied them as CIO at SunGard Availability Services. He also talks about NCR's strategy to cut its IT infrastructure costs and increase the company's profitability, its process for making investment decisions in technology, and its methodology for measuring the value of those investments.

    December 08, 2008


    Think Before Pink: Cut IT Now ... and Pay Later
    Manufacturing Business Technology
    By - Mark Roberts

    "Focused on short-term pressures to make budget cuts, it often escapes companies that disaster preparedness needs may actually be greater during times of economic duress," says William DiMartini, senior vice president of consulting services at U.S.-based SunGard Availability Services.

    December 02, 2008


    Steps to Effective Business Continuity Planning
    BusinessWeek
    By - Jim Olson

    Look to keep your people, systems, and information connected. Your business continuity strategy must encompass information, systems, people, and processes, as well as the complex interdependencies among them. If your workforce cannot connect to systems and data, there is no business. As part of the planning process, also consider what the best strategy is for your company in managing critical systems and components—either internally, with a managed hosting provider, or a combination of both. – Article by Jim Olson.

    December 01, 2008


    Defending Your Internet Presence
    BusinessWeek
    By - Jim Olson and Darren Carroll

    Your Web site is your company’s online fingerprint and the most valuable information-sharing tool that you have. But just as it enables you to reach millions of online users, it also makes it possible for hackers and vandals to break in to manipulate and destroy your data. Here are five tips that can help protect both your Web site and Web-based applications from malicious attacks. –Article by Jim Olson.

    November 13, 2008


    Organizations Need to Make Virtualization Security a Higher Priority, says SunGard
    Continuity Central
    By - Staff

    With virtualization technologies becoming pervasive in the data center, SunGard Availability Services has outlined five essential steps for addressing virtualization security challenges. The steps reflect the strategic belief that information security must be integral to the assessment, design and implementation phases of virtualized environments to protect data assets and meet compliance requirements. With many organizations focusing on virtualization benefits, they must also examine core risks before it is too late – meaning security needs to be built in from the start.

    November 13, 2008


    Virtual Machine Security Threat Levels; Don’t Believe the Hype
    SearchServerVirtualization
    By - Bridget Botelho

    And as SunGard said in its email, “With many organizations focusing on virtualization benefits, they must also examine core risks before it is too late - meaning security needs to be built in from the start.” It is why we buy life insurance and car insurance and fire insurance for our homes. (Those damn what ifs and their expensive safeguards).

    So, for the paranoid among us, check out SunGard’s suggestions for securing your virtual infrastructure here. As they say, better safe than sorry, right?


    November 11, 2008


    Business Continuity Briefs: SunGard Announces Third Quarter 2008 Results
    Continuity Central
    By - Staff

    SunGard has reported that revenue for the three months ended September 30, 2008 was $1.39 billion, an increase of 14 percent compared to the same period in 2007. Organic revenue grew 11 percent. Adjusted income from operations was $290 million, compared to $291 million in the same period in 2007.

    SunGard Availability Services revenue increased 8% to $398 million for the quarter. Organic revenue grew 3%. License fees associated with the Company's acquisition of Strohl Systems were $4 million.


    November 07, 2008


    How to Get Started with Virtualization
    Processor Magazine
    By - Robyn Weisman

    Because virtualization is a portable technology, it lets you move your IT workload across any of your servers, says Don Norbeck, director of product development at SunGard (www.sungard.com). To take advantage of virtualization’s strengths, you need to figure out what your objectives are, Norbeck says.

    “Is it about cost savings? Cost avoidance? Meeting an immediate problem within the data center? Or is it something around availability or flexibility within the IT resources that you have?” Norbeck asks. “All three of them are going to be very intensified over the next year with a lot of organizations struggling with flat or maybe even significantly decreasing IT budgets,” he says.


    November 04, 2008


    Bank Refreshes Data Center with PDUs, New CRAC Units
    Search Data Center
    By - Staff

    To tackle these problems, AgFirst called on SunGard Availability Services to assess and redesign its data center. SunGard also offers disaster recovery (DR) services with which AgFirst already had experience. "We use them for our DR location," he said. "We figured that since they're good at building their own data centers, who better to ask?"

    October 31, 2008


    Five Steps for Effective Business Continuity Planning
    Smallbiztechnology.com
    By - Staff

    Planning for disaster is one of those things that you just can't put off, because if you do it will truly be too late. Jim Olson, vice president of inside sales and solutions engineering at SunGard Availability Services, reminds us, "When the unexpected occurs - from unplanned downtime to a major disaster - the details and unplanned variables are what always impede a fast recovery. It is important to test the way you recover, and recover the way you test. Practice and experience pays off in a time of crisis."

    October 27, 2008


    Business Continuity Planning Special Report - Clients to BCP Vendors: 'Can You Do It All?'
    Securities Industry News
    By - Staff

    "The two most frequent causes of application failures or slowdowns in anybody's financial system is a coding error that has gone untested or undiscovered, or a capacity issue," says Jim Grogan, VP of consulting and product development at SunGard Availability Services, a division of Wayne, Pa.-based SunGard Data Systems. "Systems are generally not architecture to run at more than 70 percent of their capacity before unusual things start to happen."

    October 01, 2008


    Putting Plans to the Test
    Systems Management News - Not Available Online
    By - Michelle Savage

    "Recent disasters have turned DR planning from theory into reality for many companies. The solution may be complex, but the essence is simple," said Tony Maggio, engagement manager at SunGard Availability Services. "Learn from the experience, implement new strategies for the future, and don't forget to test."

    September 19, 2008


    SunGard Handles 25+ Concurrent Locations
    Continuity Central
    By - Staff

    SunGard Availability Services has reported a 100 percent success rate supporting customers impacted by Hurricane Ike.

    More than 25 SunGard customers in Texas had business and data center operations disrupted by the recent hurricane. They included small to large-sized organizations ranging from financial, manufacturing, government, technology and insurance industries, facing issues ranging from severe water damage, long-term power outages and evacuations.


    September 18, 2008


    Funds in Hurricane Ike's Path Get Back to Work
    Ignites (subscription required)
    By - Beagan Wilcox

    SunGard Availability Services, which provides disaster preparation and information services to financial firms and others, has had 27 firms in the Houston area use its services as a result of Hurricane Ike, says Bob DiLossi, director of crisis management at the company.

    In most cases, those clients have either had a mobile truck equipped with makeshift work stations dispatched to them or they’ve gone to alternate work areas that SunGard maintains in Austin and Grand Prairie, Texas.

    “A lot of people didn’t skip a beat, which was much better than when Katrina happened,” says DiLossi.


    September 16, 2008


    VMware Assembles Tech Heavyweights For Cloud Computing
    CRN
    By - Joseph Kovar

    Over 100 service providers, including BT, Rackspace, SAVVIS, Sungard, T-Systems, and Verizon (NYSE:VZ) Business, are partnering with VMware to bring customers to cloud computing with VMware's new vCloud initiative.

    August 06, 2008


    Traditional Recovery Services Are Dead
    The Forrester Blog for Security & Risk Professionals
    By - Stephanie Balaouras

    There are new services on the horizon that will make advanced IT recovery affordable for the masses. This month SunGard announced the availability of its new Virtual Server Replication Service. As I discussed in my most recent Forrester Waveof DR Service Providers and other reports, server virtualization is transforming IT recovery. With replication to a virtualized server infrastructure and shared storage infrastructure, customers can enjoy improved recovery-time and recovery-point objectives without the cost of dedicated and custom IT recovery solutions from the DR services provider. SunGard is the first DR service provider to productize these virtual services. I expect other DR service providers to follow suit.

    August 06, 2008


    SunGard cloud service brings disaster recovery relief
    SearchStorage.com
    By - Beth Pariseau

    The new hosted disaster recovery infrastructure is targeted at organizations that can't afford an entire second set of storage gear and secondary data center space. According to Mark Zwartz, manager of IT for the privately held JMB companies, the real savings for his staff will be in time and stress. "It was the highlight of our testing" for the new SunGard service when SharePoint failed over and failed back again "just beautifully," Zwartz said. SunGard estimates switching from physical to virtual replication targets will save its customers $2,000 to $5,000 per month in hardware maintenance and floor space rental costs.

    August 05, 2008


    SunGard Dives Into Virtual DR
    Byte and Switch
    By - Don Reisinger

    Disaster recovery specialist teams with VMware to launch virtual replication service

    “We turned to virtualization because our data center faces a constant need to add more servers while also being limited by the physical space available without expensive expansion,” says Mark Zwartz, IT manager at Chicago-based real estate firm JMB Companies, in a statement released yesterday. “While it took us one year to get our high availability site up and running, SunGard came in and had our virtual recovery site ready to go in three weeks.” Read more about SunGard’s new virtualization service in this article.


    July 21, 2008


    Stepping It Up: Advancing Your Recovery Strategy by Integrating Virtualization and Replication
    Disaster Recovery Journal
    By - Matt Carey

    Virtualization holds great promise for helping companies achieve sound disaster preparedness, especially when combined with a replication strategy to ensure access to fresh and updated enterprise information in the time of a crisis. Read more in this article by Matt Carey, product development manager for SunGard Availability Services.

    July 14, 2008


    Shifting SunGard’s Focus from Recovery to Planning
    Philadelphia Inquirer
    By - Joseph N. DiStefano

    In this Q&A interview, Eric Berg, CEO of SunGard Availability Services, discusses how disaster recovery and business continuity methods are rapidly evolving to meet the changing IT and business requirements of today. He explains how SunGard helps organizations better navigate this changing landscape and provides expertise to develop forward-thinking information availability strategies companies need to successfully recover from every potential disruption. This interview also explores the history of SunGard Availability Services and its local ties to the Philadelphia community.

    July 03, 2008


    Hurricane Warning: Put People First
    TotalCIO (A SearchCIO Blog)
    By - Linda Tucci

    Harriett Kummer, senior director at SunGard Availability Services Consulting in Alpahretta, Ga talks about what CIOs need to be thinking about as they fine-tune their disaster recovery plans. Read the post and listen to Harriett's podcast as well as the story of how Shane Loper, COO of Hancock Bank, oversaw the Gulfport, Miss., bank’s recovery and construction of a new $16 million data center.

    June 26, 2008


    Cris Conde: The SunGard chief’s worldview: The age of the bossy CEO is over. It’s time to collaborate
    Philadelphia Inquirer
    By - Becky Batcha

    The big idea: What Conde described at this year's World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, as "the last nail in the coffin of the imperial CEO." He foresees a new direction in organizational dynamics that gives workers authority to green-light their colleagues' best ideas, taking the boss largely out of the loop.

    June 25, 2008


    Justifying Disaster Recovery Costs
    eWEEK
    By - Michael Vizard

    With a recession looming organizations are now looking at what cuts make sense and which ones are penny-wise but pound-foolish. In economic downturns, business needs for high availability and regulatory compliance do not slow. Companies must continue to ensure disaster preparedness remains a key part of their IT priorities. In this podcast interview, SunGard’s Bill DiMartini looks at the most common mistakes IT professionals make and offers tips on how to use technology (such as virtualization and AdvancedRecovery) to keep your business running smoothly no matter the disruption.

    June 23, 2008


    High-tech 'Energy Hogs' Tasked with Going Green
    Denver Business Journal
    By - Greg Avery

    Data centers live at the heart of the speedy storage and retrieval of information that has made industries more efficient and the Internet possible. But they're also the energy hogs of high technology, consuming electricity all day, every day, so that archived medical files or Web pages are there when someone needs them.

    May 16, 2008


    SunGard Back on M&A Hunt
    Philadelphia Inquirer
    By - Joseph DiStefano

    SunGard's agreement to purchase Strohl Systems Group Inc. of King of Prussia marks the Wayne-based financial-software and recovery systems giant's first trip back to the acquisitions market since 2006, according to Bloomberg data. SunGard release here.

    May 11, 2008


    Virtualization For Disaster Recovery - SunGard Gets It
    InformationWeek
    By - Howard Marks

    Virtualization is changing the DR landscape and SunGard is at the forefront of this shift with its recent partnership with VMware. Read here to find out Howard Marks’ take on this pairing and what it could mean for your organization.

    May 10, 2008


    Virtualization Report Podcast
    InfoWorld
    By - David Marshall

    Back in the day, getting back up and running after a disaster within 36-48 hours was considered a success—now IT staff facing recovery windows of 5 hours or less, even minutes. Listen to this podcast as David Marshall describes how SunGard’s virtualization strategy can help organizations meet aggressive RTO and RPO goals.

    May 07, 2008


    SunGard plans cloud-based disaster recovery for VMware
    SearchStorage
    By - Beth Pariseau

    Learn more about SunGard’s strategic partnership with VMware in this SearchStorage article. Senior analyst Stephanie Balaouras at Forrester Research notes "the ability to replicate data and virtual machine configuration files really simplifies application restart at the alternate site, and for companies that don't have an alternate site and need the services of someone like SunGard, it means they can achieve a much better recovery time objective."

    April 30, 2008


    Disaster planning: Bank builds data center for the long haul
    SearchCIO.com
    By - Linda Tucci

    On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina ripped the roof off Hancock Bank's 15-story headquarters in Gulfport, Miss. When disaster hits, "a lot of things change," Shane Loper, chief operations officer at Hancock Bank said. Pleased with SunGard's performance in the wake of the storm --"They were the net beneath us, like their motto says, and more," Loper said -- Hancock hired the Wayne, Pa.-based provider to execute the move. In January 2007, Mickey Zandi, managing partner of SunGard's data center consolidation and migration practice, was surveying the poured concrete floor and "imagining a data center." "They had an architect and builder. They really wanted a trusted adviser throughout the construction phase," Zandi said.

    April 03, 2008


    Ziff Davis Enterprise Virtual Tradeshow on Managing Virtualization
    Ziff Davis
    By - Podcast

    Looking for some expert advice on how best to implement virtualization to save big on hardware, software, cooling & power costs? Listen to the Ziff Davis Enterprise virtual panel on "Planning a Virtualized Environment from the Ground Up." SunGard’s expert panelist says, "We all have to stop playing IT whack-a-mole. We’re very good if an issue comes up, we take care of that issue, and we go onto the next issue, [but] a virtualization program forces us to step back and gain perspective."

    January 24, 2008


    5 Ways to Build a Business Case for Business Continuity
    CSOonline.com
    By - Katherine Walsh

    The importance of business continuity planning is a no-brainer--if you're a security leader who already thinks in terms of security and risk, that is. But convincing business executives, who typically think in dollars and cents, of such a plan's criticality may be a tougher sell. While the fundamental importance of business continuity is fairly obvious, the reason to spend lots of money on it may not be.

    January 24, 2008


    SunGard on Virtualization? 'Been Doing it for Years'
    InformationWeek Virtualization Blog
    By - Joe Hernick

    I spoke with Don Norbeck out of Wayne, Pa., this morning. He's director of product development for SunGard Availability Services, though a more appropriate title might be SunGard Virtualization Guru. Or Evangelist.

    January 15, 2008


    Disaster Recovery: Doing the Basics Better
    Continuity Insights
    By - Mark Hughes and Robert DiLossi

    As many are all too painfully aware, a disaster is an unplanned event, something which cannot be predicted. However, this does not mean that organizations are at the mercy of chance. Organizations need a strong focus on three core elements — people, processes and planning — coupled with decisive leadership, in addition to technology. This is a “back to basics” approach to disaster recovery.



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    VP and CIO, Rapid Solutions Group

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