With the upsurge in weather-related incidents like Superstorm Sandy, increased cyber threats and disturbances that place people at risk – even well-intentioned ones like Occupy Wall Street – business continuity is on the radar of all-sized companies.
Pulling from 30 years in the disaster recovery space, this spring, SunGard Availability will launch SunGard Assurance, its business continuity Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, built to expand the user community – specifically the “novice” planner who engages with the software just a few times each year.
“There is a general sense that business continuity planning is important and more heightened than ever before and companies are taking action,” Louis Grosskopf, general manager of Business Continuity Software at SunGard Availability Services, told MSPToday in an interview.
SunGard Assurance, which will be available May 31, was created in partnership with more than 100 SunGard Availability Services’ customers, and is designed to reduce user pain points surrounding operational resiliency and compliance, and increase confidence surrounding business outcomes for business leaders and business continuity professionals.
Other BC solutions have been designed exclusively for expert planners, Grosskopf explained, but SunGard Assurance was designed by users, for users, making business continuity accessible for the line of business user, fostering higher engagement and better outcomes.
“SunGard Availability Services pulls from its 30 years of experience in the disaster recovery space to provide a world class infrastructure – which is run on our own enterprise class cloud infrastructure that is multi-way redundant and globally spread,” he said. “We have a dedicated support and services capability that none of our competitors have.”
In addition, SunGard has a track record of being there for its customers, as the company services nine out of the top 10 finance companies; six out of the top 10 manufacturing companies; seven out of the top 10 transportation/communications/utilities companies; and six out of the top 10 services companies.
According to SunGard, business continuity assurance helps customers deliver on the major business benefits of disaster recovery and business continuity planning at the time of need, including:
- Providing service to customers with less interruption
- Safeguarding customers and employees before, during and after disaster scenarios
- Protecting corporate reputation
- Enhancing shareholder value
SunGard Assurance utilizes SunGard Availability Services’ customized approach to offer a level of scalability required by clients regardless of their environment. For example, financial protection company Unum plans to make building, maintaining and executing BC and DR plans easier using SunGard Assurance.
At Unum, BC/DR plans are built and maintained by staff within the Unit, who will perform the actual recovery as they are the subject matter experts and have the in-depth understanding of their workflow needed to perform an actual recovery, according to Kathy Robbins, director of business continuity at Unum.
“They are periodically tested on what they will do for different scenarios of incidents within the unit using their plan, there are formal approvals and signoffs that must occur and SunGard Assurance will automate a lot of the oversight for the BC Department making the process easier,” Robbins told MSPToday.
SunGard Assurance is built on current technology. It’s intuitive and easy to use, available at work, home or anywhere the Internet is available – including mobile devices – and hosted at SunGard Availability Services with 24-hour availability and technical support, along with access from any device, she added.
“SunGard Availability Services worked closely with its customers to provide a cloud-based BC/DR planning solution to fill the unmet needs of the market solutions,” Robbins said.
SunGard Assurance offers 99.9 percent uptime Service Level Agreements. Additionally, the Internet Single Sign on is only one offered by SunGard Availability Services, and enables users to access their BC/DR plans anytime, anywhere.
“The updated user interface makes it incredibly easy for any of my team members to jump in an out of SunGard Assurance to access and update BC/DR plans,” Robbins added. “Companies that do not do BC planning are either small and have limited resources or are spinning the roulette wheel having not experienced an internal or external incident but when they do and they will it will suddenly become a priority.”
Edited by
Braden Becker
