SunGard Availability Services Strikes Third Quarter Sweet Spot with Customer Migrations, Delivers Customizable IT Solutions

WAYNE, Pa., Dec. 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SunGard Availability Services, a leading provider of information availability through managed IT, cloud and recovery services, saw an uptick in customer migrations across various lines of business (LOB) in the third quarter including Managed Services, Cloud and Recovery Services.

The company's continued focus on evolving its customers' IT strategies and delivering customizable IT solutions was executed through managing customers' technology operations, cloud migration support and recovery initiatives to ensure operational resiliency. In addition, SunGard Availability Services has continued to increase its globalization efforts to better cater to customers' needs through new leadership roles and outstanding customer service.  

"The key focus of our business is our customers," said Andy Stern, CEO, SunGard Availability Services. "We partner with our customers to provide a diverse and flexible range of solutions to fit their unique needs and to solve their IT challenges."

Managing Customers' IT Needs
Through its managed services offering, SunGard Availability Services help customers increase speed and agility, reduce expenses, minimize risk and ensure resiliency of their complex IT environment. Customer Drivers History provides insurance carriers with access to a real-time database of traffic and criminal traffic court records to help such carriers gain better insight into their customers' potential risk profiles. Drivers History partnered with SunGard Availability Services for managed hosting services to maximize the safety and security of its data. SunGard Availability Services completed Drivers History's migration to managed hosting services in the third quarter. Now, Drivers History is able to process transactions 24/7, running anywhere from 15-30,000 transactions a day with no concern for outages.

Supporting Cloud Migration
As more and more companies move to the cloud, SunGard Availability Services partners with its customers to provide tailored solutions to meet their unique application availability needs in the cloud.

In search of a partner willing to provide the leadership and expertise to help the company make the transition from a traditional hardware infrastructure to a hybrid IT environment, Advanced Energy (AE), a global leader in reliable power conversion solutions, turned to SunGard Availability Services to provide full support for 13 different SAP landscapes supporting all AE processes within a private cloud environment, along with disaster recovery. SunGard Availability Services assisted the company in its full migration to the SAP landscape which resulted in a 30 percent performance improvement in the cloud.

Since 1967, Shaw Systems provides complete solutions for loan and lease servicing, collections and recovery, and handling credit management finance software for many of the largest financial institutions. Shaw was looking for a provider that would help its clients meet financial regulations, including high uptime and recovery capabilities, and help Shaw continue to grow into the SaaS and hosting solutions market. To accomplish this, Shaw utilizes SunGard Availability Services' Enterprise Cloud Services that offer flexibility and ease-of-use for customers with smaller IT departments.

"We needed to refresh our technology infrastructure and had planned to use colocation services," said Stephen Brannon, director of business development at Shaw Systems. "Following a recommendation from SunGard Availability Services, we instead utilized cloud solutions. In doing so, we were able to meet customers' financial requirements, reduce risk for both our company and customers and cater to a new customer market."

SunGard Availability Services also signed LOGiQ³, a life insurance and reinsurance consulting and outsourced services provider, as a cloud customer in the third quarter.

Arming Customers with Recovery Capabilities
With a deep heritage in helping businesses solve complex disaster recovery challenges, SunGard Availability Services is applying its more than 30 years of experience to meet the markets evolving needs. Jonas Fitness, a leading provider of enterprise management software and billing solutions to a variety of industries, was seeking a partner to help position the company as a trusted provider of 'software for life.' SunGard Availability Services' solution for Jonas is comprised of production managed hosting with replication to a disaster recovery environment, the SunGard Managed Recovery Program and consulting services for mainframe data migration. 

In addition, SunGard Availability Services recently signed an agreement with Catalent Pharma Solutions, a provider of advanced drug delivery technologies, to deploy disaster recovery solutions for its ERP and production applications.

Magnifying Its Global Impact
The company continues to expand its global focus throughout the third quarter. As a result, SunGard Availability Services was recognized for global customer services and awarded the BCI Global Award for Business Continuity Provider of the Year (BCM Service) by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI), an institute established to promote the art and science of business continuity worldwide. Within India, the BCI has since shortlisted SunGard Availability Services' India operations for its Business Continuity Service Provider and Business Continuity Product Provider of the Year categories. 

Additionally, the company announced Keith Tilley as executive vice president, EMEA and APAC. For 35 years, Keith has built up extensive knowledge and expertise in the industry as his remit within SunGard Availability Services has steadily grown from Managing Director UK to his new role.

For additional information on SunGard Availability Services, please visit http://www.sungardas.com. 

About SunGard Availability Services
SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software. 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.

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