Main Line Health Awards Managed Services Contract to SunGard Availability Services

WAYNE, Pa., April 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Main Line Health (MLH), a non-profit health system serving portions of Philadelphia and its western suburbs, has awarded a contract to SunGard Availability Services to provide managed services for its primary data center.  SunGard will also deliver remote managed IT services across Main Line Health's four acute care hospitals -- Bryn Mawr, Lankenau, Paoli and Riddle -- as well as Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital and 21 other locations.

Main Line Health expects to improve operational efficiencies by having SunGard manage its IT infrastructure, enabling Main Line Health IT staff to focus more fully on its top priority which is delivering clinical data to the point of care.

The contract award resulted from an exhaustive evaluation during which Main Line Health investigated multiple solutions including an internal build and other third-party solution providers. Main Line Health selected SunGard because of its high level of availability and infrastructure uptime.  SunGard will host more than 500 Main Line Health servers at one of its Philadelphia-based data centers, supporting delivery of clinical information to Main Line Health's hospitals and satellite locations.  SunGard will also remotely monitor network systems at other Main Line Health facilities.

"SunGard will help us eliminate risks from system outages and enable us to reduce costly capital expenditures needed to build and support our own data center," said Karen Thomas, vice president and chief information officer at Main Line Health.  "Also by having SunGard fully monitor all servers, our IT staff can focus on managing critical applications and data delivery."

Hosting with SunGard will help ensure that clinical data flows remain uninterrupted to the point of care, which will help Main Line Health maintain its reputation and leadership in the regional healthcare marketplace.  SunGard managed hosting will also help increase Main Line Health's IT flexibility and decrease application rollout times by providing data center infrastructure on demand.

"SunGard's facility addressed our information availability and application uptime goals with its 2(N+1) design, which has full dual distribution paths and no single point-of-failure.  We also wanted to be in an energy-efficient data center to keep operating expenses low and SunGard utilizes several energy best practices to meet these needs," said Ms. Thomas.

"As hospitals rely more on technology, their data centers require significant upgrades or they risk outages and related downtime which may impact the quality of patient care," said Tim Cecconi, senior vice president at SunGard Availability Services.  "Main Line Health is a leader in utilizing technology to deliver quality patient care and in taking steps to address the availability requirements of its hospitals."

SunGard Availability Services addresses the unique needs of healthcare providers which often manage dozens or more individual applications, making a tiered availability solution essential.  SunGard sees tiered availability as starting with a solid production data center environment, supported by the ability to expand IT infrastructure on demand to support new applications.  SunGard solutions are based on tiering system redundancies, data protection and disaster recovery capabilities to protect clinical data flows and help hospitals move cost models from capital to operational expenditures.

About Main Line Health

Main Line Health is suburban Philadelphia's most comprehensive healthcare resource, offering a full range of medical, surgical, obstetric, pediatric, psychiatric and emergency services.  Forming the core of Main Line Health are four of the region's most respected acute care hospitals -- Lankenau, Bryn Mawr, Paoli and Riddle -- as well as one of the nation's premier facilities for rehabilitative medicine, Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital.  Recognized particularly for its cardiac, orthopedic, oncology, rehabilitation and women's clinical services, Main Line Health trains more than 100 interns, residents and fellows annually from medical schools throughout the country and is actively involved in  significant research studies, many of which are funded by the National Institutes of Health.

About SunGard Availability Services

SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software to more than 10,000 customers in North America and Europe.  With five million square feet of datacenter and operations space, SunGard assists IT organizations across virtually all industry and government sectors to prepare for and recover from emergencies by helping them minimize their computer downtime and optimize their uptime. Through direct sales and channel partners, we help organizations ensure their people and customers have uninterrupted access to the information systems they need in order to do business. To learn more, visit www.availability.sungard.com or call 1-800-468-7483.

About SunGard

SunGard is one of the world's leading software and technology services companies.  SunGard has more than 20,000 employees and serves 25,000 customers in 70 countries.  SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector.  SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software.  With annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 435 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and IT services company.

Trademark Information: SunGard and the SunGard logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

SOURCE SunGard Availability Services