Sungard, VMware Partner on Disaster Recovery

Seeking to leverage the power of virtualization in data backup and disaster recovery, SunGard Availability Services today announced a partnership with VMware, Inc. (VMW), the market leader in virtualization software. SunGard will leverage VMware virtualization to create a suite of simple, fully-managed AdvancedRecovery services, including managed virtual recovery services. The offering is expected to be available later this year.

"VMware's virtualization platform is transforming disaster recovery by helping companies to protect a wide range of applications and data," said Frank Casey, vice president of product strategy for SunGard. "We are working with VMware to create a faster, centralized and automated information availability service to help organizations of all sizes that need to protect both virtual and traditional IT environments. It is the next stage of SunGard's commitment to delivering AvancedRecovery solutions to companies with varying IT infrastructure needs, and we are tapping the best minds and technologies in the industry to make this happen."

"Using VMware virtualization with SunGard can help organizations effectively minimize unplanned downtime, deliver higher levels of availability and be better prepared in the event of a disaster," said Carl Eschenbach, executive vice president, worldwide field operations, VMware. "Together, we are delivering customers a powerful joint solution that helps enable a disaster-resilient IT infrastructure, with the simplicity of a managed service offering."

Sungard Availability Services operates more than 3 million square feet of hardened facilities. Sungard Availability services range from 48-hour disaster recovery hot-sites to always-on, high-availability infrastructure and electronic vaulting services. It has more than 25,000 customers in more than 50 countries, including the world's 50 largest financial services companies. Last July Sungard acquired managed hosting provider Vericenter to further expand its footprint.