WAYNE, Pa., April 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- SunGard Availability Services has announced enhancements to PLANet, a Web-based business continuity planning tool for community banks and credit unions that helps ensure business continuity plans are constructed according to financial industry regulations and best practices.  The new capabilities are customer-driven enhancements that help financial organizations lower business risk and simplify regulatory compliance while also improving disaster preparedness.

"SunGard's PLANet gives us the tools and confidence that we are well-prepared for a potential business disruption and can continue to manage operations in the manner our customers expect and deserve," said Vance Vargo, chief executive officer at Family First Credit Union.   "SunGard has clearly established itself as a trusted partner in helping financial institutions to develop and maintain dynamic business continuity management programs that mitigate risks and help address specific regulatory requirements."

New feature enhancements include:

Vendor Management enhancements. To better manage business partners in the vendor supply chain lifecycle, Vendor Management provides RFP-like checklists for organizations to perform an assessment at the beginning of the vendor relationship as well as an annual review.  This capability can be particularly useful in working with IT vendors who have access to sensitive data and for whom security protocols must be in place.  Financial institutions can also attach all vendor documentation to a single vendor record, helping simplify management.

Risk Assessment enhancements.  PLANet now provides fields within Risk Assessment to include notes of mitigation strategies that have been implemented.  It also offers new reporting features that help organizations perform sorting – such as by probability or criticality of the impact – to determine which activities are more likely to happen and determine the potential impact of the risk.

Reporting enhancements. To help address regulatory audits and make it easier to sort data, PLANet includes several new reports to the Testing and Business Impact Analysis capabilities.  For instance, testing reports include business continuity planning components, such as "most recent test" and "test by date," to respond quickly to audit requests.

These and other feature enhancements, such as Rich Text Formatting (RTF) for memo fields and user-administered Password Reset, reflect SunGard's response to direct, ongoing feedback led by a user community and customer advisory board.

"For more than a decade, community banks and credit unions have trusted PLANet for automated business continuity management and planning," said Tracey Forbes, vice president of product development at SunGard Availability Services.  "This newest release of PLANet demonstrates SunGard's commitment to listening to our customers and keeping pace with their evolving planning and compliance needs."

About SunGard Availability Services

SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software to 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.sungardas.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 of about $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 380 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, visit www.sungard.com.

Trademark Information: SunGard, the SunGard logo and PLANet 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