Study Finds Enterprise Reliance on 'Always On' Systems Necessary to Ensure Continual Business Operations

WAYNE, Pa., May 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of information availability and business continuity services, released survey results published in an IDC White Paper, sponsored by SunGard Availability Services, Lack of Operational Resilience Will Undermine Enterprise Competitiveness: A Strategy for Availability (April 2013) today that identify the competitive advantages of establishing sophisticated systems for maintaining uninterrupted business operations. Nearly 40 percent of line of business (LOB) and IT executives surveyed indicated "operational resilience" systems signify business and IT services that are always on and available.

While the survey results published in the white paper found expectations high for such systems, it also recorded fundamental challenges that hinder organizations achieving desired levels of continuous business operations.  These potential vulnerabilities, it indicates, could lead to significant underperformance by an enterprise.

Currently the IT environments of most organizations involve a complex mixture of hybrid legacy infrastructure, middleware and application technologies that also include new capabilities involving virtualized servers as well as public and private cloud resources. For many enterprises, overcoming existing organizational and technology vulnerabilities that are impeding their ability to achieve operational resilience, which are only further challenged by the adoption of cloud, social, and mobile, will likely require utilizing a combination of internal and external IT services.

"With today's changing and complex IT environment and so much discussion around topics such as big data and security, enterprises face challenging expectations from customers, employees and partners," said Jack Dziak, executive vice president and general manager of Managed Services at SunGard Availability Services. "To ensure they maintain an expected level of continuous business operations, whether for daily operations or when unexpected events occur, organizations must employ a new paradigm of operational resilience. For many, that will require a 'hybrid IT' approach."

In addition, the white paper identifies three key building blocks for achieving operational resiliency and combatting vulnerabilities. These are:

• Information security and data governance;
• Business continuity and disaster recovery; and
• IT service management.

Collectively, these three disciplines support the level of agility and resilience needed for an enterprise to maintain always on operations. Additionally, the survey indicates the need for enterprises to develop an operational resilience strategy that uses the three key building blocks.

"The level of operational resilience required to ensure competitiveness will require setting priorities, synchronizing and orchestrating a vast set of factors and resources across an enterprise," said David Tapper, vice president, Outsourcing and Offshore Services, IDC. "These must include the three building blocks of an operational resilience business model."

To learn more about how to achieve operational resiliency taking a hybrid IT approach, join the May 16^th webcast, "You Can Have It All!  How to Leverage a Hybrid IT Strategy," hosted by SunGard Availability Services and IDC at 1 p.m. ET.

Methodology

IDC interviewed more than 900 LOB and IT executives in the U.S. and the United Kingdom across a series of industries to determine the enterprise view of operational resilience and how prepared enterprises are in providing such capabilities.

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.

SOURCE SunGard Availability Services

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