SunGard Availability Services Launches Virtualization Assessment And Strategy And Design Consulting Services

SunGard Availability Services today launched its Virtualization Assessment and Virtualization Strategy & Design consulting services to help companies evaluate the potential business upside and risks associated with migrating to virtual infrastructure, while also incorporating best practices for information availability.

In as quickly as one month, customers will receive a clear business case for both IT and business managers highlighting the expected benefits of moving to a virtual infrastructure. Through this collaborative engagement, SunGard will also provide key design recommendations customized to customers’ specific IT environments, including how to help ensure the right level of availability for their needs leveraging virtualization. These services dovetail into SunGard’s ongoing virtualization-based infrastructure and services initiative announced earlier this year, which extend SunGard’s portfolio of information availability offerings.

Virtualization is taking hold within enterprise IT because of its many benefits, including reducing costs for power and cooling, and reducing overall data center space requirements, which in turn support green IT initiatives. SunGard’s new virtualization consulting services will not only help enterprises determine how best to meet their cost reduction, consolidation and green IT needs, but more importantly customers will also be able to build in the necessary infrastructure requirements to meet recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTOs and RPOs), helping to ensure proper levels of information availability.

“Many companies are in the process of evaluating virtualization and how it will work in their IT environments, or how it can apply to a data center consolidation or move project. Firms are looking for a partner to help keep them on the right path,” said Mark Stoecklein, senior director, Technology Solutions, Professional Services of SunGard Availability Services. “We are particularly concerned with the number of companies ignoring information availability best practices based on a premise that virtualization on its own delivers disaster recovery capabilities. What most vendors are offering is fault tolerance, which may not help companies meet business requirements for RTOs and RPOs.”

Virtualization Assessment Service
SunGard’s Virtualization Assessment service provides a comprehensive analysis of a company’s existing IT infrastructure, and presents opportunities and a business case for migrating to a virtual infrastructure, with a focus on the company’s specific information availability and business continuity needs. SunGard consultants work directly with IT staff as they evaluate virtualization for their business.

SunGard’s Virtualization Assessment is a phased process taking up to one month to complete, depending on the size of the organization (number of servers), beginning with a discovery phase, then solution analysis and documentation, and finally a business case presentation, which includes SunGard’s recommendations.

The Virtualization Assessment is designed to optimize the customer’s environment while raising the level of capability and maturity of its information availability program. SunGard’s expert consultants will also identify risks, gaps and future actions the customer should consider to make its critical business processes and information available and recoverable.

Virtualization Strategy & Design Service
The Virtualization Strategy & Design service helps companies develop a detailed implementation plan, based on information culled from the Virtualization Assessment, or from similar thorough assessments of IT infrastructure and business processes the customer has handled directly. From start to finish, the Strategy & Design process takes from one to four weeks to complete, depending on the size of the organization.

SunGard’s virtualization experts work with each customer to create a customized virtualization implementation project plan, including detailed cost analysis for software, hardware and services. The team also delivers a detailed design guide, which outlines the ideal system infrastructure for the migration from a physical to virtual environment, while also accommodating requirements for information availability.

To learn more about SunGard’s new Virtualization Assessment and Virtualization Strategy & Design services, visit www.availability.sungard.com.

About SunGard Availability Services
SunGard Availability Services is the pioneer and leading provider of information availability solutions, helping to ensure that more than 10,000 customers in North America and Europe have access to their business-critical information systems. With nearly four million square feet of secure facilities, SunGard offers a complete range of information availability solutions that include managed IT, professional and business continuity services. SunGard provides services to support an always-on production environment, as well as over 30 technology platforms to support customers who require a traditional 24-48 hour recovery time frame. SunGard also has technology and systems management services for application and data center outsourcing, as well as business continuity consulting services and planning software. For more information about SunGard Availability Services, visit www.availability.sungard.com or call 1-800-523-4970.

About SunGard
With annual revenue exceeding $4 billion, SunGard is a global leader in software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also helps information-dependent enterprises of all types to ensure the continuity of their business. SunGard serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 50 countries, including the world’s 50 largest financial services companies. Visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.

Trademark Information: SunGard and the 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.

For more information, contact:
Valeria Maltoni
Director, Marketing Communications
SunGard Availability Services
Tel: 484-582-2441
E-mail: valeria.maltoni@sungard.com