Sungard Availability Services
Finding the Right Approach to Deliver Business-Critical IT Systems

As cloud computing continues to gain momentum within the enterprise IT space, moving applications onto private or multi-tenant cloud platforms has created its own set of challenges for many organizations. This is especially true for core business applications such as SAP®, where ERP systems integration with downstream or legacy applications is often a necessity. Add to that the organizational challenges of working with multiple cloud platforms or service providers, and cloud computing just doesn’t seem to live up to its promise of IT agility and operational efficiency.

Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS) is working hard to change that. “What we’ve learned is that core business application hosting is only part of the picture. You have to consider the broader view and accommodate as many of the supporting elements as possible,” says Bob Hill, Senior Product Manager for SAP® Services at Sungard AS. Sungard AS has been delivering cloud-based customer solutions for many years and was one of the first managed service providers to receive SAP®cloud certification.

Hill continues: “A truly efficient cloud utility model will function across applications, including key technical integration points—but ideally it should also provide standardization of operations processes, security functions, and performance Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) just to name a few. We do this at Sungard AS by providing a range of linkable, use-case-specific cloud platforms as well as physical hosting options to complement our SAP® and SAP® HANA virtualized cloud services.”

Another area of growing concern for many customers is regulatory and audit compliance. When IT organizations outsource various applications to multiple specialized service providers, managing for compliance can become a nightmare. Sungard AS has been focusing on this problem as well, and the company’s many decades of experience in delivering business continuity and disaster recovery services is evident in its approach.

For example, its SAP® cloud platforms include a secondary site recoverability option with built in testing and recovery SLAs for those customers that require this enhanced level of business availability protection. In addition to managed cloud recoverability, Sungard AS Recovery-as-a-Service (RaaS) solutions offer a holistic approach to business resiliency for customer systems, whether hosted internally or with other service providers. The company’s comprehensive RaaS solutions are designed to be flexible enough to work with complex, enterprise system environments and to scale up or down based on their customer’s individual needs, while offering a range of recovery time and recovery point objectives.

One example is CSG International, a global provider of cloud based business support solutions to the communications industry that worked with Sungard AS to install a comprehensive recovery program. The company processes over one billion cable statements worldwide each year, and a serious services outage could prove to be catastrophic. CSG International deemed it essential to add a managed recovery program to its business continuity and disaster-recovery capabilities.

“We know that integrated solutions are increasingly important to IT organizations that have diversified their hosting approach, and we have a range of both physical and cloud-based service models that address this need,” says Anthony Brown, Partner Development Manager for Sungard AS.

Specific to SAP®, Sungard AS knows how to manage SAP® production systems and is using this knowledge to build solutions for customers whose requirements aren’t being satisfied either internally or with their current SAP® hosting providers. “From managed SAP® and SAP® HANA cloud based services to managed RaaS, we’re helping customers to realize the full potential of cloud-based services,” concludes Hill.