LONDON: 15 March 2006: SunGard Availability Services has invested in over 6,500 Hewlett Packard PCs for its UK Workplace Recovery customers. The technology refresh makes SunGard the only Information Availability and business continuity service provider to offer organisations a uniform PC platform, across it’s 20 UK workplace recovery centres. The HP Compaq Dc7600 was chosen following testing and evaluation of the most recent PC models against criteria including performance, power consumption and the ability to recover various operating systems.
Dave Gilpin, Products and Solutions Director, SunGard Availability Services said, “Testing of continuity plans is a vital component of an effective information availability strategy and companies need to do ‘dress rehearsals’ regularly to make sure their plans are faultless. By standardising on PC recovery technology, customers only have to test their standard desktop build on one specification of PC. As a result the cost of testing is lowered, PCs can be imaged very quickly and companies can develop flexible continuity plans involving more than one recovery site.”
SunGard Workplace Recovery centres provide full office and LAN facilities with complete contact centre capability, swipe card security and CCTV systems and kitchens and rest areas. “The only difference our customers notice when working in our recovery centres is the view out the window – even phone numbers and extensions are the same,” said Gilpin.
Power Consumption and the Environment
To meet the demanding power requirements of end users, technology has become faster and smarter, but as a result, it requires more power to operate. Dave Gilpin, Director of Products and Solutions, SunGard Availability Services said: “Companies need to consider that power hungry PCs can overheat which can lead to hardware failures and the knock-on effects of downtime. Also, one of the less commonly known business risks is the impact of ever more power hungry servers and PCs on buildings. Were it not for our due diligence and change management process, a technology implementation of this size could have had the unforeseen impact of overloading the power infrastructure and causing a massive outage in one of our buildings. As one the largest PC procurement deals of this year, our partnership with HP demonstrates how power control is progressively dictating how technology is managed.”
HP’s environmentally responsible manufacturing practices also contributed to the buying decision. The HP Compaq Dc7600 is one of the first PCs to fully meet the European Union’s Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS Directive). The new rules, which come into force in July 2006 place the costs and obligations of producing more environmentally friendly products, and ultimately disposing of the products, on technology producers, such as HP.
Finance Industry Compatibility
During the mid 90’s, before the widespread acceptance of internet applications, many banks and insurance organisations developed proprietary business applications running on the Windows NT 4 operating system. As a result, SunGard Availability Services sought a system that existing customers could recover to easily whilst accommodating the widest range of operating systems and existing applications. “After testing and evaluating the PC market with our financial customers in mind we found that HP was the only manufacturer that could recover the NT 4 operating system,” said Gilpin.
Other SunGard Recovery Centre PC Features
-
Support for Freedos, SuSe Linux Professional 9, Windows: 2003 and XP Professional, XP Home, 2000, NT and NT4 operating systems
-
Intel chipset 945G and processors P4 650 range enabling 64 bit extension processing
-
Intel Active Management Technology for remote client network management
-
The first embedded security chip built to the Trusted Computing Group’s new Trusted Platform Module (TPM) specification.
SunGard customers will not be charged any incremental subscription fees to obtain the benefits of the technology refresh programme.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About SunGard Availability Services
SunGard Availability Services is the pioneer and leading provider of Information Availability services, helping to ensure that more than 10,000 customers in North America and Europe have access to their business-critical information systems. With over three million square feet of hardened facilities, SunGard offers a complete range of Information Availability services for more than 30 technology platforms, from 48 hour disaster recovery hot sites to always-on, high-availability infrastructure, co-location and electronic vaulting services. SunGard also provides technology and systems management services for application and data centre outsourcing, as well as business continuity consulting services and planning software. Visit SunGard Availability Services UK at www.sungard.co.uk