SunGard Availability Launches Cloud Services

SunGard Availability Services today rolled out its Enterprise Cloud Services, an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering that includes managed compute, network, storage and security services to support production applications. Today's announcement follows deployments with selected SunGard customers.

SunGard’s cloud offering is built atop Vblock technology from VMware, Cisco and EMC (VCE) and include both multi-tenant and dedicated private cloud solutions. SunGard is also offering options for intrusion detection, which provide an added level of security for customer environments, and database services that enable management of SQL databases.

99.95 Percent Uptime SLA

SunGard Enterprise Cloud Services come with a service level agreement (SLA) based on 99.95 percent cloud infrastructure availability, which covers both the VM infrastructure and hardware in SunGard data centers.

"With the launch of our fully managed, Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution, our goal is to deliver not just an IT solution, but to address critical business challenges for our customers," said Rob Walters, vice president of product management at SunGard Availability Services. "Our customers do not want to trade service for the financial flexibility and speed of provisioning that cloud offers. They want both - and now they can have it."

Among the SunGard customers adopting the cloud solution is Cycle30, which offers hosted billing solutions for telecommunications, cable and utility service providers.

“Cycle30 has saved millions of dollars by using SunGard’s Enterprise Cloud Services,” said Jim Dunlap, president of Cycle30. “Speed-to-market was important to Cycle30 and the cloud was a big help there. SunGard’s IaaS solution allowed us to turn up our platform quickly, and that experience gave us confidence that SunGard will help us serve customers on accelerated timelines.”

Legacy of Trust An Asset for SunGard

Analysts noted that SunGard has a track record in providing secure services to the enterprise sector, not unlike some of the managed hosting companies that have had success in attracting customers to their cloud offerings.

“Enterprises around the globe have trusted SunGard with their most secure, mission-critical applications and infrastructure to provide continuous business operations for years,” said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “SunGard is now leveraging that expertise and experience to deliver organizations a secure, highly available enterprise cloud service."

In addition to the IaaS solution, SunGard offers Cloud Readiness Assessment and Migration Services to help customers evaluate their environments and determine preparedness for migration to the cloud.