SunGard Availability Services Expands Enterprise-Grade Cloud Computing Solutions

WAYNE, Pa., March 22 /PRNewswire/ -- SunGard Availability Services today announced expansion of its enterprise-grade cloud computing platform to deliver application availability and ultimately recovery in the cloud. Customer demand for the SunGard cloud solutions is strong.

As a pioneer and leader in IT operations and information availability management, SunGard is strongly positioned to deliver a highly available and resilient cloud computing solution for enterprise-grade requirements. Customers also benefit from access to a portfolio of managed hosting, storage and recovery services for physical and virtual environments.    

SunGard cloud solutions in North America will take advantage of a Vblock™ Infrastructure Package, recently announced by the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, which was formed by Cisco and EMC together with VMware.

The SunGard cloud solutions are part of the company's strategy to help customers simplify the way they leverage IT infrastructure to drive business agility and differentiation in a cost-effective manner. SunGard's cloud platform will provide the foundation for delivering Infrastructure-, Platform- and Software-as-a-Service in an enterprise-grade, secure and highly available environment.  SunGard will provide IT infrastructure on demand, which allows companies to grow or contract cloud resources based on business conditions while also addressing their need for cloud-based hot sites as low-cost recovery options.

Matt Barcus, chief technology officer of New Tech Network, a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks Foundation, said, "We chose SunGard because its cloud platform is truly an enterprise-grade environment.  New Tech needed a partner with a reputation for addressing availability and data protection, but at the same time could easily scale to meet our demanding growth. We currently have 40 high schools nationwide that rely on our applications daily, and we will double that number in the next two years. With SunGard, we have peace of mind that our applications are up and running on the latest cloud technology and managed by a skilled and experienced team."

The roadmap for SunGard's cloud solutions is focused on providing customers with a clear and proven pathway to cloud benefits while mitigating risks. It helps the majority of customers to integrate the cloud into their current application infrastructure and manage both environments with the same high operating standards and resilience.

SunGard's cloud platform will be built on a Vblock Infrastructure Package.  This preconfigured, pretested solution combines best-in-class technology including Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS), Nexus 1000v and Multilayer Director Switches (MDS), EMC CLARiiON storage (secured by RSA), and the VMware vSphere™ platform.  This technology choice, combined with close engineering and sales collaboration across these companies, will provide customers with a path to pervasive virtualization and cloud IT infrastructure, while helping reduce total cost of ownership and meeting today's most demanding use cases.

Executive Quotes

"Our customers want to reduce the time spent integrating and maintaining technology so they can concentrate on more strategic tasks," said Indu Kodukula, executive vice president and chief technology officer of SunGard Availability Services. "Our partnership with Cisco, EMC, and VMware will accelerate our enterprise cloud platform development to deliver just-right, just-in-time managed and recovery services to our customers."

Robert Lloyd, executive vice president, Worldwide Operations for Cisco, said,  "Disaster recovery presents a significant market opportunity as companies look to utilize the cloud to address their uptime, continuity and resiliency objectives. Combining SunGard's experience in recovery and production with the best-of-breed products contained in Vblock Infrastructure Packages will enable SunGard to offer a resilient solution that helps customers reduce IT complexity and cost as they continue on their journey to cloud computing."  

SunGard Availability Services previously unveiled SunGard-as-a-Service, its fully managed 'private cloud' service, in the UK.

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.

EMC, CLARiiON, and Ionix are either registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. RSA is a registered trademark of RSA Security LLC.

VMware and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

SOURCE SunGard Availability Services