LONDON, 16th May, 2006 -- SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of Information Availability and business continuity services, won three prestigious awards at the Business Continuity Awards 2006, recognising outstanding achievement in the face of one of the most demanding years in business continuity on record. For the fifth time in the awards’ eight-year history, SunGard was named “Business Continuity Service Provider of the Year”, as well as receiving the following accolades:
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Richard Jones, managing consultant, SunGard Availability Services, won the award for Business Continuity Consultant of the Year;
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SunGard National Network (SNN), SunGard’s nationwide data backup, recovery and availability environment, won Most Innovative Product of the Year;
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Assisted Northgate Information Solutions in its recovery from the Buncefield fuel depot blasts, which was awarded Recovery of the Year.
Business Continuity Provider of the Year
Business Continuity Managers chose SunGard as Business Continuity Service Provider of 2006 based on its record of availability, flexibility and consistency over the last 12 months, a period which has thrown up some of the most severe business continuity challenges the UK has ever faced. The judging of the “Business Continuity Service Provider of the Year” award is decided by business continuity managers across all industry sectors in the UK. Under this all-industry selection process SunGard has now won the award five times, having been a finalist on seven occasions and nominated eight.
Commenting at the awards, Keith Tilley, managing director UK & SVP Europe, SunGard Availability Services, said: “This is our most successful year at these respected industry awards and it is a credit to the passion, commitment, and integrity of SunGard’s staff, the innovation and reliability inherent in our products and the trust our customers place in us to keep them in business, no matter what they are faced with.”
Most Effective Recovery of the Year
Northgate Information Solutions was awarded the Most Effective Recovery of the Year award for its handling of the Buncefield blasts, which destroyed its offices in December 2005. SunGard and Northgate Information Solutions worked together to invoke a business continuity plan within hours in order to rebuild customers’ servers at SunGard’s London Technology Centre and restore full IT services to its customers. Chris Stone, chief executive, Northgate Information Solutions, said: “SunGard acted in an exemplary fashion in re-establishing connections to our customers. This award recognises SunGard’s expert support during the invocation of our business continuity plan, which safeguarded and protected the information, business operations, and employees of our customers.”
Consultant of the Year
Richard Jones, managing consultant, SunGard Availability Services, went home with the “Consultant of the Year” award based on the professionalism and innovation displayed in his role as principal consultant for the UK based Business Continuity Management (BCM) Practice of SunGard’s Professional Services. SunGard consultants have been finalists in this category on five other occasions. Jones’ current role includes leading strategic projects for customers in a variety of industry sectors including global logistics, financial services and mobile telecommunications, as well as supporting sales opportunities in the UK and EMEA, with additional responsibilities for the development of products and services and quality control within the practice. The judges selected Jones based on the high regard in which he is held within the industry and his experience of working across a wide geographical spread. The overriding message in the testimonials received was that Jones had a proven solid performance and an ability to think quickly and respond effectively.
Most Innovative Product of the Year
SunGard’s newly launched National Network (SNN) was awarded the “Most Innovative Product of the Year Award” based on its ability to extend its infrastructure to customers’ own networks, helping enable data protection services and instantaneous response to disaster declarations. Offering nationwide real-time data management, backup, recovery and restoration, SNN is a 100Mb nationwide Ethernet network, which connects all of SunGard’s recovery facilities together, and links all the facilities to SunGard’s flagship London Technology Centre (LTC) and its pioneering high bandwidth optical metropolitan area network, ScaleNet. Keith Tilley said: “The award acknowledges SunGard as a leading light in recovery centre networking. Our aim is to provide our customers with the flexibility and resilience to tackle any interruption. The reliability of the SunGard network has been proven on numerous occasions, from the London bombings to Hurricane Katrina, which occurred within weeks of one another. In all of the invocations it has received, SunGard has never exceeded 35% of the available bandwidth on its 10/100Mb overlay network.”
This is the second time that SunGard has won the Most Innovative Product of the Year award and follows on from the success of MobileVault (2002) and the highly-commended Paragon (2005), as well as finalists Workplace Recovery (2003), Mobile Bank Recovery Centre (2001), iXguardian (2001) and e-continuity (2000), giving SunGard more success in this category than any other company.
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 3 million sq. ft. of hardened facilities, it 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. For more information about SunGard Availability Services contact: 0800 143 413, infoavail@sungard.com or www.sungard.co.uk.