SunGard Availability Services Outlines How Recovery in the Cloud Can Boost Hurricane Season Preparedness

WAYNE, Pa., July 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Hurricane season brings into focus the need for companies to reexamine disaster recovery plans.  SunGard Availability Services advises organizations to approach hurricane preparedness not as a reactive disaster recovery process but as the opportunity to manage a hurricane as a planned event. The plan process can benefit organizations not just on their worst day, in the wake of a disaster, but every day, by revealing critical gaps in the availability of production environments.

Unlike many other weather-related events, hurricanes have a relatively long warning time-frame, which can allow for the proactive relocation of people and corporate assets in advance of the storm rather than waiting for the worst to occur.  

As part of hurricane preparedness planning, companies should examine the role cloud computing can play as a new platform for lower-cost applications recovery.   "Infrastructure recovery is evolving to include a combination of physical, virtual and cloud components, allowing organizations to mix and match to meet specific needs of the applications and systems being recovered," said Kelly Baig, director, product marketing at SunGard Availability Services.  "Incorporating this expanded range of options makes it more critical than ever to be sure your recovery service provider has proven experience in handling real-life production operations along with designing high availability solutions and managing business continuity plans."

Additionally, recovery plans should include a process to guide operations in moving back to production systems from recovery sites following failures and disaster threats, such as after a hurricane passes.

"Many businesses fail to take into consideration the time it takes to move recovered applications back to a production environment following a disruption," said Ms. Baig.   "Automation capabilities, and careful sequencing of data resynchronization and service restart, are essential in speeding this process and minimizing the impact on business users."

Among the other drivers behind the trend toward recovery in the cloud are:

• Cloud-based recovery services utilize a shared, not dedicated, IT infrastructure which can help reduce customer costs of having additional capacity available when it is needed.
• Cloud computing provides a service pricing model so companies can ramp up capacity as needed during a hurricane response, without incurring added CAPEX.
• Fully-managed recovery services on a cloud platform can help reduce the cost and burden of recovery planning and testing during a disaster.
• Recovery planning and testing can reveal critical gaps in production environments and help close those gaps for improved daily operations.

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 data center 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 20,000 employees and serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 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 of about $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 434 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and IT services company. Look for us wherever the mission is critical. 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