SunGard Availability Services Releases SunGard Assurance(cm) to Address Evolving Business Continuity Planning Needs

WAYNE, Pa., March 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SunGard Availability Services, the leading provider of information availability and disaster recovery services, today announced SunGard Assurance^cm, a continuity management Software-as-a-Service offering. The solution, created in partnership with more than 100 SunGard Availability Services' customers, reduces user pain points surrounding operational resiliency and compliance, and instills a sense of confidence in business outcomes for business leaders and business continuity professionals alike.

A new era is emerging from business continuity's changing environment, forever changing what matters most. This new era of business continuity assurance shifts the focus from plans to outcomes. In this dynamic era, business continuity assurance drives higher levels of engagement in the process and increases confidence in outcomes.

Business continuity assurance helps customers deliver on the core business benefits of disaster recovery and business continuity planning at the time of need:

• Providing service to customers with less interruption
• Safeguarding customers and employees before, during and after disaster scenarios
• Protecting corporate reputation
• Enhancing shareholder value

"With a 30-year history in disaster recovery and business continuity, SunGard Availability Services had the opportunity to work closely with our customers to perfect SunGard Assurance^cm in order to meet their ever-changing needs," said Louis Grosskopf, general manager, Business Continuity Software, SunGard Availability Services. "It's about engaging all of us to find the vulnerabilities that matter, to guide the next best action, to expect change and accommodate it often; this is how confidence in plans is created. In this way, SunGard Assurance^cm ushers in the business continuity assurance era."

SunGard Assurance^cm is designed to expand the user community, specifically the "novice" planner who engages with the software just a few times each year, for example, a bank branch manager. This new approach helps customers capture valuable input from less technical stakeholders with less effort and higher confidence.

Additional key features include mobile access, granting all users access from mobile devices at any time and from anywhere, as well as performance and uptime. Keeping pace with the "always-on" business model, SunGard Assurance^cm provides a guaranteed 99.9 percent uptime SLA, which is especially important for customers in highly-regulated industries where compliance and security issues are paramount.

"Improving business continuity and disaster recovery have been reported as a top ten priority for the last two years on ESG's IT Spending Research reports, as well as the number one planned data protection initiative in 2012," says Jason Buffington, senior analyst for data protection at ESG. "Customers of all sizes understand the need for flexible and cost-effective data protection and assured availability. Unfortunately, most don't have the expertise and resources to pull it off – and those that do are often burdened with other tactical tasks that distract them from their more strategic functions such as business continuity/disaster recovery.  What's needed are ways to capture the processes and experience of real business continuity/disaster recovery planning and make them accessible to the masses. That is what SunGard is looking to do through Assurance^cm."

Organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to SMBs, are being forced to do more with less and are in search of scalable systems that meet their needs no matter the size. SunGard Assurance^cm utilizes SunGard Availability Services' customized approach to offer a level of scalability required by clients regardless of their environment.

"Our industry has seen a number of different standards and tools over the years that have not made business continuity planning simpler," said Kathy Robbins, director of Business Continuity, Unum. "SunGard Assurance^cm may be the total package as it's built with customer input, includes a review of all current industry standards and tools and is based on current technology. I am counting the days until I get my hands on SunGard Assurance^cm to begin developing my 'state of the art' business continuity program with users who enjoy the process of building and maintaining executable business continuity and disaster recovery plans."

SunGard Assurance^cm will be available globally on May 31, 2013. For more information about SunGard Assurance^cm, visit www.sungardas.com/software.

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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