Companies now recognise they cannot afford to be unavailable for any significant period of time – customers will simply go to a competitor – and, consequently, organisations are becoming ever more aggressive with their availability and recovery goals.   Adding to the challenge, globalisation means today businesses need to recover on a wider geographic scale than ever before.  

There are many reasons why organisations fail to meet high availability and recovery targets – among them lack of resources, skills, testing and plans  – but one of the most common problems is recovery plans being out of sync with the production environment.  This is perhaps unsurprising when with today’s complex production environments just one change a month per system can result in more than 10,000 configuration changes before each annual test.

In addition, the majority of organisations focus testing on recovering IT systems rather than recovering business services and applications, creating a potential shortfall in meeting stakeholder exepctations when recovery is for real.

Last year, we developed our Managed Recovery Programme (MRP) to help organisations align their recovery plans to their business continuity objectives and provide the skills and resources to fully document the recovery processes and undertake the recovery during testing and invocation.  This service enables organisations to focus their valuable resources on their production environment.

The underlying philosophy of the service is to recover customers’ business processes and applications, not just their servers and reduce downtime to the absolute minimum.  We recognised that by applying our Business and ICT Continuity expertise, as well as our experience of performing recoveries and managing critical systems, we could remove unnecessary pain points while giving customers the assurance of achieving an application recovery time to an SLA.

But MRP is not just for those customers who experience problems.  Regular testing is vital – whether to comply with regulatory or audit requirements or provide stakeholder reassurance – but it can be costly, time-consuming and takes resources away from running production projects the business depends on.  For this reason, MRP can benefit all types of organisation, not only those that have experienced the headaches and expense of a difficult test or recovery as we can run the tests on their behalf.  Here are some of the reasons why MRP is proving an attractive proposition for many companies:

• Plugs skills gaps and people shortages – tests can be planned but an invocation occurs without warning. Our onsite recovery specialists perform successful recoveries week in, week out – not once or twice a year.
• The reassurance of 24/7 service availability – and compliance statements for regulatory or audit purposes.
• Backed by service level agreements.
• Allows the testing budget to be ringfenced.
• Reduces the risk of tests being cancelled due to staff shortages or business priorities, which only increases the likelihood of future failures.
• Lessens dependence on the skills and knowledge of individual employees/contractors, which creates a vacuum when they leave.
• Eliminates the issues that typically frustrate the recovery process – the MRP change management process ensures the recovery environment stays in sync with production and remains aligned to business recovery objectives.
• Frees up staff to focus on projects that add value to the business – People cost money: Could their time be better spent concentrating on the production environment rather than testing? Using MRP to undertake routine tasks can be more cost-efficient.
• Automates elements of recovery through the use of toolsets for critical applications.

So how does MRP work in practice?  MRP is delivered following a 10 stage ITIL-based process. From the start, Sungard AS deploys an MRP team to work with the customer to review existing practices and develop a recovery solution that will deliver against the business recovery objectives. A complete set of ITIL-focused processes and documentation is produced so that at time of test or invocation Sungard AS is in a position to recover the customer’s environment, to the agreed level of service, allowing them to concentrate on their core activities.

Service design and onboarding

This first stage is a recovery information gathering exercise that starts with a workshop involving core management team and technicians to enable SunGard to fully understand the application landscape and assess the requirements of a recovery solution.  We then start developing a recovery solution and associated plans and procedures to meet the business continuity objectives.

Service transition

Following the initial set of documentation we conduct a Procedure Verification Test in partnership with the customer to verify that all the knowledge gained, documentation produced and solution implemented are all valid and proven. It’s about proving we are able to achieve the customer’s objectives before moving on to an SLA-backed managed recovery service.

Service operation

The service now moves into the ‘business as usual’ state whereby the operations teams conduct tests, and recover applications on a client’s behalf.  We embed ourselves into the client change management process in order to manage change control throughout the life of the contract, maintain recovery documentation and conduct regular reviews with key stakeholders to ensure contract schedules are aligned, services are up-to-date and that the recovery strategy continues to meet the changing needs of the business.

To find out how HCL Insurance BPO Services Ltd benefitted from MRP, click here. 

Coming as it does within days of Sungard Availability Services becoming independent of SunGard Data Systems, the award signifies industry confidence in Sungard AS’ focus on providing world-class managed availability solutions of which cloud is a key aspect.

The award, which highlights Sungard AS’ expertise in operating data centers and leveraging Cisco’s Powered Cloud Services, further confirms Sungard AS’ position as one of the leading providers within the cloud industry. Over the past year Sungard AS has been focused on transforming its cloud relationship with Cisco to offer services including Infrastructure-as-a-Service and cloud solutions which are aligned with customers’ business priorities and helping them fulfill tangible business outcomes. Weekly joint pipeline and account review meetings with the Cisco Management team has ensured partnering of the highest quality, and has expanded its business strategy to take the Cloud Services offering to market through a number of Cisco Cloud Reseller Partners. This has resulted in the generation of a rapidly expanding Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud pipeline for the company.

Commenting on the awards, Keith Tilley, EVP, EMEA & APAC, Sungard Availability Services, said: “We are delighted to have received recognition of the great results we’ve seen so far. Not only is our partnership with Cisco beneficial to Sungard AS as a business, but it also allows us to provide a comprehensive and high quality service to our own end-users and the wider Cisco customer-base, who need to operate in an all-time market.”

“This award also recognises and symbolises the strength of Sungard AS as a standalone organisation; having recently split-off from SunGard Data Systems, we will be looking to further build our own partner relationships within the market and focus on those solutions which will help accelerate our ability to meet the growing availability needs of our customers on a global basis to help them deliver the outcomes they need within today’s all-time business world.”

John Ferguson, head of managed services, CashFac explains, “Our customer onboarding process would sometimes take weeks – now it’s a matter of days for a new customer and we can rapidly scale up resources to meet additional demand on the infrastructure.”

“I liked the combination of having local account management but also working with a provider that has national and international reach,” comments John Ferguson. “We have customers in the Asia Pacific region and it is useful to know SunGard has a strong presence in the US and across Europe to support our growth plans.”

CashFac is now reaping all the benefits of an outsourced service. “SunGard’s Enterprise Cloud Service has taken away the headaches of having to manage and monitor infrastructure,” John Ferguson remarks. “Because of SunGard we are now in a strong position to build this side of the business and react so much more quickly to market changes or customer demands.”

As for the burgeoning relationship between the two companies, he says, “I’ve found the SunGard people I’ve dealt with very helpful and professional. They’ve gone out their way to understand our business and I very much view it as a long-term partnership.”

SunGard Availabilitty Services selected:

•          Enterprise Cloud Services
•          Vaulting

You can read the full story for yourself here.

London, UK – SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of Information Availability services, today announced that leading European fleet management solutions provider, Transics, has selected SunGard to provide a high performance hosted environment to optimise the agility, flexibility and reliability of its solution. By deploying a broad range of Managed Services and Hybrid Cloud Services, Transics offers its customers an even more stable, robust and available infrastructure into which they can both entrust  and secure their mission critical data.

Based in Belgium, Transics operates worldwide specialising in fleet management solutions for the transport and logistics sector. The heart of its solution, the market-leading TX-CONNECT, is a back-office software which helps carriers manage their trucks, drivers, trailers, cargo and orders more efficiently, thus helping to raise productivity while trimming costs.  This is achieved via on-board computers which feed real-time data directly to customers worldwide. To support its growth and future innovation Transics was keen to ensure that its technology partner had a proven track record, could offer a global standard of managed services and deliver a hosting platform that would not only improve the availability and agility of the service for existing customers, but also be able to scale up quickly and efficiently in line with its growth plans.

“We had three key objectives for selecting a technology partner,” comments Koen Uyttenhove, vice president – customer services, Transics. “Our partner had to have a strong global presence and reputation, the ability to deliver a solution that could provide tangible ROI and finally, they had to genuinely understand the business and be able to offer a high level of day-to-day technical support. In the end, SunGard was the perfect choice.”

Since working with SunGard Availability Services, Transics is now able to offer customers improved performance levels, with greater reliability and resilience built into its infrastructure. Additionally, the business has seen a significant saving in IT costs, allowing resources that were previously directed towards maintaining the IT environment to now be used to drive revenue elsewhere in the organisation.

“Partnering with a globally recognised managed services player such as SunGard has had a positive impact across the entire organisation,” added Uyttenhove. “The stability of the platform has been exceptional and we’ve never experienced anything but 100 per cent uptime. We’ve even seen an increase in new business, as customers and prospects feel their vital data is now more safe and secure. Additionally, the deal has helped us future proof our IT estate as we are able to scale up our computing power quicker to accommodate new customers within the system – helping us grow the business at a faster rate.”  

“Ambitious and fast growing companies such as Transics require a technology solution that can offer business impact, both instantly and in the long-term,” comments Keith Tilley, executive vice president, EMEA & APAC, SunGard Availability Services. “With SunGard supporting its underlying infrastructure, Transics can now switch its focus away from maintenance issues to channel time, focus and resources into optimising the range of solutions available for customers, streamline its back-office and ultimately increase its bottom line.”

All of SunGard Availability Services’ solutions are underpinned by its strength of heritage which spans five decades of delivering Information Availability. By combining this experience to work in partnership with customers, SunGard helps them to harness their people, their processes and their technology to optimise their business outcomes and competitiveness.

Dublin, Ireland – SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of Information Availability services, today announced that leading European fleet management solutions provider, Transics, has selected SunGard to provide a high performance hosted environment to optimise the agility, flexibility and reliability of its solution. By deploying a broad range of Managed Services and Hybrid Cloud Services, Transics offers its customers an even more stable, robust and available infrastructure into which they can both entrust  and secure their mission critical data.

Based in Belgium, Transics operates worldwide specialising in fleet management solutions for the transport and logistics sector. The heart of its solution, the market-leading TX-CONNECT, is a back-office software which helps carriers manage their trucks, drivers, trailers, cargo and orders more efficiently, thus helping to raise productivity while trimming costs.  This is achieved via on-board computers which feed real-time data directly to customers worldwide. To support its growth and future innovation Transics was keen to ensure that its technology partner had a proven track record, could offer a global standard of managed services and deliver a hosting platform that would not only improve the availability and agility of the service for existing customers, but also be able to scale up quickly and efficiently in line with its growth plans.

“We had three key objectives for selecting a technology partner,” comments Koen Uyttenhove, vice president – customer services, Transics. “Our partner had to have a strong global presence and reputation, the ability to deliver a solution that could provide tangible ROI and finally, they had to genuinely understand the business and be able to offer a high level of day-to-day technical support. In the end, SunGard was the perfect choice.”

Since working with SunGard Availability Services, Transics is now able to offer customers improved performance levels, with greater reliability and resilience built into its infrastructure. Additionally, the business has seen a significant saving in IT costs, allowing resources that were previously directed towards maintaining the IT environment to now be used to drive revenue elsewhere in the organisation.

“Partnering with a globally recognised managed services player such as SunGard has had a positive impact across the entire organisation,” added Uyttenhove. “The stability of the platform has been exceptional and we’ve never experienced anything but 100 per cent uptime. We’ve even seen an increase in new business, as customers and prospects feel their vital data is now more safe and secure. Additionally, the deal has helped us future proof our IT estate as we are able to scale up our computing power quicker to accommodate new customers within the system – helping us grow the business at a faster rate.”  

“Ambitious and fast growing companies such as Transics require a technology solution that can offer business impact, both instantly and in the long-term,” comments Keith Tilley, executive vice president, EMEA & APAC, SunGard Availability Services. “With SunGard supporting its underlying infrastructure, Transics can now switch its focus away from maintenance issues to channel time, focus and resources into optimising the range of solutions available for customers, streamline its back-office and ultimately increase its bottom line.”

All of SunGard Availability Services’ solutions are underpinned by its strength of heritage which spans five decades of delivering Information Availability. By combining this experience to work in partnership with customers, SunGard helps them to harness their people, their processes and their technology to optimise their business outcomes and competitiveness.

As organisations begin to see the benefits of All -Time™ availability – both in improving staff effectiveness and in offering the highest level of service for customers, 2013 was an important year for us here at SunGard Availability Services.   Before we get too deep into 2014, we wanted to reflect on some of the highlights of 2013.

Bringing Availability to All Areas of the Market

No matter what market sector, business availability now plays a key role.  Of the numerous customer wins we’ve had last year we felt that one stood out in particular: Serco, an international services provider, signed an agreement with us last year as it sought to refresh its IT estate and take advantage of the benefits that our cloud-based managed services can provide.  Partnering with SunGard Availability Services has allowed the company to focus its time and resources on improving its range of products and applications instead of merely running IT systems, ensuring that availability is always at the forefront.

This win also reflected SunGard’s deeper portfolio beyond our  recovery heritage, with Analyst Dr Katy Ring at the 451 Group commenting, "This contract win illustrates the extent to which SunGard has become an outcome-driven IT infrastructure service provider, managing contracts via a number of KPIs tied to the customer organization's business goals." Thus positioning our work with Serco as a way of clearly forging ahead, not only with our identity around availability services, but in broadening market understanding as to what availability in the wider sense entails

Speaking of our five year agreement with Serco, Keith Tilley, EVP EMEA & APAC, commented, “This agreement reinforces our belief at SunGard that giving customers a tailored approach is key to gaining trust as a technology partner. As the partner of choice, we understand the flexibility required and the approach organisations like Serco need to take in order to ensure they are entrusting their IT assets to someone they know will invest in the partnership”.

Increasing Our Understanding of Business Priorities

In 2013 we carried out two pieces of enlightening research. In July we revealed that UK businesses were putting plans for IT transformation at the top of their list in a bid to increase competitiveness and offer greater capacity for business growth. After spending the last five years in a state of uncertainty, the findings showed that the majority of organisations are now looking to refresh their technology estates within the next 36 months, with 49 per cent of respondents stating demands for flexible and mobile working policies were pushing the need for a change in IT requirements.

Six months on and our latest research campaign seems to echo this sentiment. 97 per cent of UK business decision makers believe closer alignment between individual business departments and the IT function will yield a competitive advantage. In addition, nearly 70 per cent felt it could offer greater efficiency, and over half believe it would provide improved organisational flexibility.

The need to deliver All-time™ availability to the enterprise is not only driving technology investment in business but is shaping the boardroom strategy.

Developing Business Solutions to Enable All-Time Availability

We introduced our cloud-based business continuity management tool, SunGard Assurance^CM, to the European market, with roll-out set to occur across 2014. The tool offers businesses a real-time overview of their entire organisation to help identify possible issues and weaknesses. The software interface has been made as intuitive as possible (‘Facebook easy’, no less) to offer a full visualisation of the plans helping to encourage a wide user base and allow inputs from all areas of the company.  Taking advantage of its cloud platform, the programme can be accessed from any device and any location, customised for individual businesses and doesn’t require any level of specialist training.

Strengthening our Core Team

As part of our commitment to offering the best possible service across the continent we appointed John Stevenson to the newly created role of Chief Operating Officer in Europe. John brings invaluable experience in working with global organisations and will undoubtedly play a vital role as we help businesses remain competitive, resilient and available all year round.

Finally, it was a great year for Keith Tilley. Not only did he celebrate his 35^th year with the company, but his role as Executive Vice President for EMEA has now been extended into the APAC region. Keith is now responsible for over 3,000 customers as well as the strategic development within these emerging markets. This is a rapidly growing geography for SunGard, and we now offer over 1,000 dedicated recovery positions and 230 shared recovery positions across India, located in the regions of Noida, Mumbai and Chennai. We’re also looking at Pune and Bangalore for future locations. Keith has also been tasked with ensuring the continued development of our Managed Infrastructure and Hosting Services, Managed Recovery Programme and global Enterprise Cloud products.

As we look ahead to the rest of 2014, let’s keep in mind the key trends Keith Tilley identified in our earlier blog post. In particular, watch this space for how we examine the changing role of the CIO as businesses call for grater collaboration across the C-suite.

SunGard services selected:

· High Availability Hosting

· Intelligent Hands

· Managed Internet Bandwidth

· Workplace Recovery

· Project Management.

Single provider preferred

The majority of organisations that have migrated virtual workloads to third parties tend to deal with a single service provider rather than designate different applications or services to multiple hosting sites.

This implies that maintaining and monitoring more than one cloud service is associated with concerns over security, complexity and management.

Scope for third party providers

Where possible, customer workloads should be demonstrably interoperable and securely portable between virtualised environments – allowing migration to take place without any additional formatting.

Third party providers and cloud brokers have an ideal opportunity to address lock-in fears and alleviate management burden by taking responsibility for the migration and monitoring of multiple workloads under a single managed contract, backed by appropriate SLAs.

Matching service

This provides the option of matching specific project objectives and/or workloads to cloud- based services that are best placed to meet their requirements. For example, cloud bursting CPU batch processing or temporary storage resources lend themselves to supporting test and development cycles.

We have recently seen the emergence of various open source cloud management platforms and software stacks designed to simplify cloud-to-cloud and hosted cloud to hybrid cloud migration. But their success depends largely on support from multiple hardware/software vendors, cloud service providers and telecommunications carriers, in particular the volume and breadth of cloud services between which virtualised workloads can be migrated.

You can find out more about migrating to the cloud by downloading the full Cloud Workload Migration White Paper.

SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of Information Availability services, has announced it has been appointed by City Link to manage its cloud and managed IT services, including its data centre supply. The appointment forms part of a £5 million pound investment by City Link, one of the UK’s leading premium express parcel companies, to generate both tangible customer investments and real efficiency improvements.

As part of the contract, SunGard will work with City Link to complete a migration and transition programme. SunGard’s focus on delivering the right solution for the right situation, regardless of market changes, will result in the applications that run the courier service being delivered on SunGard’s Enterprise Cloud Platform. The resilience, agility and robustness of this platform will cater to City Link’s ambitions to transform themselves to achieve sustained growth, with SunGard’s maintenance of the infrastructure and management of the underlying platform allowing City Link employees to concentrate on their core business outcomes.

“As a rapidly expanding next day courier company in a highly competitive market, City Link places customer satisfaction and quality of service at the heart of its activities,” says Keith Tilley, Executive Vice President, EMEA & APAC, SunGard Availability Services. “Its supporting technology platform, therefore, has to deliver 24/7 resilience and availability of information, which is what this investment will provide. With 2014 fast approaching, businesses will need to ensure such measures are in place, to remain competitive and drive business growth throughout next year.”

Spearheading the initiative is City Link’s IT Director, James Coxon, who will be running the transition project to introduce the new services. He commented: “The data centre function is at the very core of the City Link operation and one of the main IT elements which drives the business. We therefore needed not just a supplier but a partner, one that can bring the skills and capabilities we need to plan, design and transition our services under one roof that will ultimately deliver the customer benefits we’re looking to achieve – greater reliability, flexibility and responsiveness.”

Tilley continues; “It’s encouraging to see companies such as City Link recognise that significant IT infrastructure investment is not just an IT project. It’s about achieving continuous improvement whilst also readying for new growth opportunities. These are changes that have the potential to truly impact how a company operates and the value it can deliver for end-users and partners alike. Our focus, now, is to ensure City Link works smarter and manages cost efficiencies to drive this transformational change.”

The supply contract was put out to tender to both incumbent and new suppliers, to ensure City Link got the optimum service and best in class providers.

About City Link

Formed in 1969, City Link is one of the UK's leading premium express delivery companies with a pedigree spanning over 40 years:

A market leading service provider of guaranteed UK, Next Day and timed delivery services, City Link successfully delivers over 76,000,000 parcels a year across the UK and worldwide the company boasts annual revenues of over £320m.

City Link has a national network of 60 depots across the UK, operates 2500 delivery vehicles and offers a range of services including UK next day delivery, International, Post, Sameday and Specialist Services.