SunGard Availability Services Consulting Introduces New Practice and Focus on Operational Resilience

WAYNE, Pa., May 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- SunGard Availability Services today announced the refocusing of its consulting organization to improve the resilience of its clients' operations.  SunGard Consulting helps organizations build the most effective strategy for managing operational risk while ensuring availability through innovative business continuity strategies, enabling technologies such as cloud computing, and improving efficiencies through high-performing IT operating models.

The SunGard Consulting practice leverages a combination of proprietary and industry best practices and tools to better assess, prioritize and manage controls for operational risks.  The practice utilizes SunGard's new proprietary Risk, Resilience and Recovery (R3) framework methodology and quantifiably measures risk by leveraging software tools such as the RiskView Business Risk Analytics™ solution from Rev2®.

SunGard has also established a partnership with The Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute to use their Resilience Management Model CERT-RMM, a management model for operational resilience.  "We are pleased to welcome SunGard Availability Services as an SEI Partner, with a staff trained, and a practice built, around leveraging the RMM model," said Lisa Masciantonio, manager of the SEI Partner Network.  "Our Partners are a valuable extension of the SEI, helping to meet the demand for SEI courses and services worldwide with a level of quality that matches the SEI's own."

"SunGard Consulting brings unmatched experience in the three pillars of operational resilience – business continuity/disaster recovery, security and IT operations," said Warren Zafrin, SunGard Availability Services, Service Lines and Solutions managing partner. "We can help customers measure their ability to control operational resilience, and determine how their organizations will perform under times of stress, disruption and changing risk environments.  This can enable them to improve their compliance posture and lower operational risks."

The SunGard R3 Framework takes a holistic approach to operational risk management.  It starts at the enterprise level to understand current maturity of the risk management posture, processes and tools of a client organization.  The framework provides an organization with useful risk data and analytics to better measure and align operational risk programs across the enterprise and promotes integration with the business' broader operational framework.

"SunGard is leveraging the best of both worlds: proprietary experience from their own high caliber availability experts, certification by industry leading resiliency models, and tools for operational risk," explained Jason Buffington, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG).

SunGard's R3 Framework leverages existing risk data and industry-based operational risk management data, allowing practice consultants to reduce the time required for discovery phases.  In a client engagement, SunGard uses a tailored, highly repeatable framework of risk management processes that address the dynamics of the organization and its operational and strategic challenges.

Combining the theory framework of CERT-RMM with the R3 implementation model aligns risk appetite to business objectives and provides a transparent structure for driving operational resilience.  This approach gives the business the tools, training and guidance it needs to maintain operations before, during and after an event that impacts the business.

SunGard uses Rev2's patent-pending RiskView Business Risk Analytics solution to help reduce the client's organizational risk profile.  RiskView provides the ability to identify, compare and quantify vulnerabilities across an entire enterprise before they impact business performance.  RiskView identifies the materiality of risks according to their potential impact on business performance, helping clients to prioritize and schedule business process improvement, problem resolution and overall spending. "We are thrilled that RiskView has been selected as a cornerstone of the R3 Framework initiative," said Rev2 CEO Robert Cruickshank. "SunGard Consulting has developed an industry-leading operational resilience practice and we're looking forward to this opportunity to work closely with the team."

About SunGard Availability Services

SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software to over 9,000 customers globally.  With approximately five million square feet of datacenter and operations space, SunGard Availability Services helps customers improve the resilience of their mission critical systems by designing, implementing and managing cost-effective solutions using people, process and technology to address enterprise IT availability needs. 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.sungardas.com or call 1-800-468-7483.  Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

About SunGard

SunGard is one of the world's leading software and technology services companies.  SunGard has more than 17,000 employees and serves approximately 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries.  SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, 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 of about $4.5 billion, SunGard is the largest privately held software and services company and was ranked 480 on the Fortune 500 in 2011. For more information, please visit www.sungard.com.

Trademark Information: SunGard and 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