Safety National Selects SunGard Secure2Disk Solution to Help Protect Critical Data and Achieve Faster Recovery

WAYNE, Pa., May 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Safety National, one of the nation's leading providers of excess workers' compensation coverage, has selected SunGard Availability Services (EMC World booth # 905) to help minimize data loss and IT downtime that impact business operations and compliance processes.  SunGard is helping Safety National accelerate business recovery time by increasing backup process efficiency, and improving the speed and reliability of disaster recovery.  

Safety National has deployed Secure2Disk backup and recovery solution, powered by EMC® Data Domain® deduplication storage systems, to deliver on-site operational restart capabilities and off-site recovery for production applications, including claims and policy writing.  SunGard is providing managed services to support Safety National's Tier 0 infrastructure at time of disaster or test, and consulting and recovery assistance services to help enhance its disaster recovery program.

"SunGard delivered tremendous value by providing a holistic solution that combines backup, recovery services and managed hosting, as compared to other providers that would have required us to piece together disparate offerings," said Bryan Ferguson, senior director of technology and strategic planning at Safety National.  "In designing and deploying our solution, SunGard acted as an extension of our own IT team to address our specific availability needs and help ensure we have a resilient recovery program in place."

A key business driver behind moving to a new system was the inability of Safety National's tape-based backup system to meet a less than 24 hour recovery time objective, established by the company's board of directors, in the event of a disaster or systems outage.  Safety National saw this issue could create challenges for the company in maintaining its high standards for delivering quality customer service should data not be available.  

Another Safety National business requirement was moving backup data out of the region.  Safety National's St. Louis headquarters is in the nation's highest risk earthquake fault zone outside of the west coast and the company considered retrieving backup tapes from regional storage as one of its biggest vulnerabilities in disaster recovery.

With the Secure2Disk solution, SunGard has provided EMC Data Domain systems at Safety National's data center and a secure SunGard recovery center located in Arizona, where backup data is automatically replicated via WAN (wide area network) and is available for restoration.  Data Domain data deduplication systems eliminate redundant backup data to minimize replication bandwidth required in transferring it to the SunGard facility and reduce storage requirements.  

Secure2Disk utilizes Safety National's existing backup and recovery infrastructure, applications, scripts and procedures, which helped enable fast implementation with minimal training requirements.

"Safety National utilized industry best practices by connecting always-on backup operations to a secondary site to address the business' recovery time objectives," said Shane Jackson, senior director of product marketing, EMC Backup Recovery Systems division. "Secure2Disk powered by Data Domain systems can help customers reduce risk by integrating with existing backup software and improving total cost of ownership with SunGard's recovery facilities and systems, which eliminates capital expenditure requirements."

"Financial services companies like Safety National face strict compliance obligations that require strategies to restore business operations quickly in the event of a disaster or outage," said Souvik Choudhury, senior director, product management, at SunGard Availability Services.  "Secure2Disk is helping Safety National achieve higher availability to not only address regulatory requirements but also help protect against lost business or revenue that may result from extended downtime."  

About SunGard Availability Services

SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software to more than 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.availability.sungard.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 exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 380 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and IT services company.

Trademark Information: SunGard, the SunGard logo and Secure2Disk 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

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