Sungard Availability Services: Harnessing a Disaster Recovery Heritage to Help Organizations Realize the Full Potential of the Cloud

With a history of providing leading organizations with the IT expertise they need to excel for more than four decades, it should come as no surprise that Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS) is on the leading edge providing the cloud solutions and services enterprises need to be flexible and fast.

Sungard AS is a leading provider of cloud connected infrastructure solutions serving enterprise customers from 75 hardened data centers and workplace recovery facilities in nine countries.

We recently caught up with Jim Paterson, executive vice president of global product and technology at Sungard AS, to learn what he sees in the rapidly evolving cloud landscape. We also wanted to learn how the company’s disaster recovery pedigree influences its work in the cloud, what he sees as the driving force behind Sungard AS’ dramatic growth, and where he sees the greatest opportunities for enterprises to harness the capabilities of the cloud today.

“Sungard AS draws on more than 40 years of experience across a broad range of IT landscapes to align the right workloads with the right infrastructures – whether that’s hybrid cloud, legacy systems, or something in between,” says Paterson. “Every customer’s needs and situation are different. We pride ourselves on our ability to partner with them to deliver positive business outcomes at any stage in their digital transformation journey.”

Paterson notes that while every customer may be at a different point in their journey,  a strong foundation begins with a solid plan.

“We enable our customers to manage uncertainty with a solid plan that puts the right strategies and solutions in place needed to deploy high-performance, secure solutions that align with all of the ways they do business,” he adds. “We constantly drive innovation and agility. Today, that typically means pairing advanced digital technologies with next-generation managed services across scalable, multi-cloud, and hybrid IT infrastructure solutions.”

The company’s customers include organizations in just about every sector of the economy including communications, financial services, healthcare, insurance, retail, and utilities.

“We are the people who make resilient IT a reality so our customers can focus on what’s important to them, whether that means delivering packages or patient care, managing finances or the fleet, capturing sales, or streamlining processes on the factory floor,” notes Paterson. “Sungard AS Cloud Services enable customers to seamlessly connect their private infrastructure to their public or private resources with a fully redundant network that gives the privacy, reliability, and control one might expect from a hybrid cloud architecture.”

He points out that the Sungard AS Private Cloud, built on hyper-converged technology from VMware and hardware from Dell Technologies, delivers the resiliency, control, and commercial flexibility businesses seek.

“It is built to scale with customers at the pace they need to grow, with flexible minimum commitments that they control, as well as on-demand scalability,” he adds. “We also offer software-defined networking to connect remote data centers and customer premises, as well as a common toolset to manage resources in either Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure that enables cross-platform deployments with ease.”

Notably, the Sungard AS Private Cloud is VMware Cloud Verified. Paterson stresses that it’s an important validation.

“With the VMware Cloud Verified designation we can assure customers that they can move to the cloud with confidence knowing that Sungard AS meets or exceeds VMware’s rigorous standards for offering VMware cloud technology,” he says. “VMware Cloud Verified partner services enable customers to achieve unmatched levels of consistency, performance, and interoperability for both traditional and containerized enterprise applications, giving them the confidence that the service is based on the most advanced VMware cloud technologies.”

A Disaster Recovery Heritage

“Our more than 40 years of disaster recovery experience and our highly advanced approach prepares companies for disruptive or disastrous events,” says Paterson. “This is made possible by spanning the people, processes, and technologies involved in delivering a fully recoverable production environment – something the full array of managed services we provide supports. If disaster happens, our Cloud & IT Infrastructure Recovery Service can connect a customer’s data to their backup infrastructure, and help them recover their network and applications, whether for cloud-based or physical IT infrastructures – enabling them to quickly regain business continuity.”

Paterson stresses that while the cloud has radically improved disaster recovery and backup protocols, its full potential is even greater.

“We believe the biggest opportunities to harness the cloud arise from its commercial flexibility, zero commitment, and no vendor lock in,” he says. “Another great opportunity with cloud is the ability to take advantage of workload mobility. Workload mobility means supporting a hybrid environment, and it is a critical feature since it provides the flexibility to run each workload in the most optimal location.”

Learn more about Sungard AS and its partnership with VMware here.