December 2014 – Sungard AS Avail IE

WELCOME TO THE WINTER EDITION OF AVAIL

By Sungard AS Ireland | December 19, 2014

This issue seems to have a theme of ‘change’. An interesting Sungard Availability Services-commissioned report that reveals the extent to which cloud computing has been a disruptive technology, radically changing the business landscape.

Elsewhere, we share the findings of several studies: one looks at IT governance in a changing world, another explores how an organisation’s ability to change is critical to business survival while a third report reveals that the swift migration to the cloud we have seen over recent years is continuing unabated.

In home news, we have just launched two new services in Dublin with the introduction of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) and our globally recognised dedicated workplace in Dublin with the opening of two new customer suites.

Please note that from 1st January all Sungard Availability Services email addresses change to @sungardas.com. We’d hate your emails to bounce back so please update your address books to ensure important messages to your Sungard AS contacts continue to be delivered.

One thing that remains unchanged is our commitment to continually improving the service we give you. In this regard, we bring you the headline results of this year’s customer survey – thank you if you’re one of the 201 people who took the time to give us your feedback.

As always, I hope you enjoy this issue and my team welcomes feedback on any aspect of the magazine, particularly your views on its new online format. Just send your comments to the editor at AVAIL@sungardas.com

All that remains is for me to wish you a happy and peaceful festive season on behalf of all of the Sungard AS team!

Gary Watson
General Manager Ireland

BRANDTONE RELIES ON CLOUD TO CONNECT BRANDS TO CONSUMERS

By Sungard AS Ireland | December 19, 2014

Mobile marketing specialist Brandtone chose Sungard Availability Services’ Managed Private Cloud to host the large databases of shoppers’ details it builds through its marketing campaigns delivered by mobile phone worldwide. The fast-growing firm engages with close to one billion consumers globally on behalf of household names such as Carling Black Label, Dove, Knorr, Omo and PepsiCo so resilience, security and scalability were vital.

Neil Flanagan, Chief Technology Officer for Brandtone, recalls, “Sungard AS came top of the list for a number of reasons – reputation and track record among them. Their responses to our questions convinced us they were more than capable of meeting our complex web hosting requirements. For example, our sophisticated Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform requires global connectivity. This year, it will be pushing out over one billion calls in India alone so we needed an enterprise-grade platform we could rely on.”

He adds, “Another reason was that we recognised from the very beginning we would need geographically dispersed failover sites and Sungard AS was able to offer us that combination of a local and global presence.”

All-time availability is critical to the viability of Brandtone’s business. Neil Flanagan explains, “The nature of our mobile marketing campaigns means timing is everything so it is essential we have 24/7/365 availability. Campaigns are many months in the planning and when we do a big media launch it will hit our servers like a tsunami. Our IT infrastructure must be ready and able to cope with those sudden spikes in data at all times.”

“A big media launch will hit our servers like a tsunami so we have to be ready and able to cope with sudden spikes in data”
Neil Flanagan, Chief Technology Officer, Brandtone

Sungard AS’s enterprise-class Managed Private Cloud platform provides a robust environment for its systems and hugely valuable data. Resilience is assured through global load balancing, multiple internet carriers, managed firewall, two-factor authentication and DDoS mitigation.

Sungard AS’s cloud gives Brandtone dedicated virtualisation and storage that allows enhanced levels of customisation, security and performance. With Personally Identifiable Information (PII) a perennial hot issue, Neil Flanagan finds the high level of control and security the platform affords particularly reassuring. He notes, “We curate a wealth of data on behalf of our customers so data segregation is paramount. Sungard AS’s cloud configurations enable us to maintain its integrity. Our customers rely on us to provide a secure service and we, in turn, rely on Sungard AS.”

The flexibility of Sungard AS’s cloud environment has been crucial in accommodating Brandtone’s phenomenal growth rate. Each component of the resource pool is individually flexible – the available processors, memory, storage, number of instances and bandwidth. Neil Flanagan knows he can flex Brandtone’s baseline resources by up to 100% of his agreed capacity at any time to meet changing business demands.

While Brandtone is able to monitor usage, modify infrastructure, provision resources, change firewall policy and support new business applications on demand via a convenient online portal, each change is professionally reviewed by Sungard AS’s experts to preserve the integrity of the live production environment.

Brandtone is delighted with the level of availability it enjoys. “We needed very robust systems with full failover capability and that’s exactly what Sungard AS has given us – 100% uptime,” reports Neil Flanagan. He admits, “There’s no doubt we’re a demanding client. We’ve gone into 12 new countries in the past 18 months. This level of aggressive growth requires constant adaptability and responsiveness from Sungard AS. I’m happy to say they’ve risen to the challenge. I consider them a close and trusted partner.”

Read the full case study

IS YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN THE WEAKEST LINK?

By Sungard AS Ireland | December 19, 2014

According to a new supply chain resilience survey, in the last five years more than three quarters (78.6%) of organisations have experienced at least one incident involving their supply chain. Worryingly, the true figure could be much higher as two-thirds of firms admit they do not have full visibility of supply chain disruption levels due to a lack of reporting.

While the majority (60%) of disruptions occur at Tier 1 of the supply chain, a growing number – 10% in 2013 – report disruptions at Tier 3 and below. Over the five-year period, unplanned IT or telecom outages and extreme weather conditions have continued to be the top causes of business interruption. Among other sources of disruption, insolvency of a pivotal supplier and illness of a key individual are no longer seen as being major concerns but being let down by an outsource and disruption to the transport network have moved up the rankings.

As you might expect, there are marked differences between geographical location and industry sector when it comes to the causes of disruption. For example, manufacturers are most vulnerable to product quality incidents while insolvency of a supplier is the main concern in the engineering and construction industries. Looking at geography, an earthquake or tsunami is one of the top issues in Asia, Australia and New Zealand while adverse weather is a big concern for companies in the US.

Although productivity losses were among the main consequences of supply chain disruption, a growing number of firms in the survey cited reputational damage. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a growing number of respondents are now expecting suppliers to conform to an internationally recognised standard such as ISO 22301 – 39% asked for this evidence in 2013 alone. A third (35.7%) check their suppliers’ business continuity management (BCM) provision at contract renewal. However, more than 70% do not provide BCM assurance for a majority of their new business tenders.

These survey findings are the latest to confirm the business case for measures to mitigate business interruptions caused by disruption to the supply chain. For many years Sungard Availability Services has helped customers reduce their exposure to supply chain failure by conducting one-off supplier audits in response to customer requests to identify points of vulnerability. However, such ad hoc audits provide protection for only several suppliers. Understandably, it is the customer’s most critical suppliers that are audited as they account for the lion’s share of spend, but it may in fact be the lower value, smaller suppliers that are more likely to fail and result in legal or regulatory issues.

Cost-efficient approach to mitigating supplier risk
Consequently, Sungard AS has developed a new service that effectively turns the traditional approach to ensuring resilience of the supply chain on its head. Rather than selectively auditing individual suppliers, which could allow some to fall through the cracks, it focuses on ensuring the customer’s own processes and procedures around management of its supply chain are robust. This builds a more comprehensive picture of supply chain resilience.

The new service, ‘Supply Chain Framework Review’, is delivered by Sungard AS’s experienced consulting team and gives customers the benefit of Sungard AS’s expertise in three spheres: legal, procurement and business continuity management. The consulting assignment is broken down into three phases:

Phase 1 – Assessment
Sungard AS’s consultants evaluate your current procurement framework from all three angles (legal, procurement and BC), looking at issues such as how you identify supply chain dependencies in your business continuity process and add clauses to contracts. This early stage will often highlight shortcomings that, once addressed, will result in improved data protection, information security and corporate social responsibility performance, as well as more robust supply chain management procedures. However, if your firm’s legal, procurement and BC processes are already sufficiently mature Sungard AS will proceed to the next stage.

Phase 2 – Implementation
Sungard AS will draw up a bespoke system to review your supply chain. This involves recommending a series of questions to be included at the RFP or RFQ stage when seeking new suppliers, together with contract clauses to be incorporated at contract renewal for existing suppliers. Our consultants also look at the changes that need to be made to internal systems to flag contracts due for renewal so the new clauses can be added, preventing contracts from simply being automatically renewed.

Phase 3 – Review
Finally, once the new procurement procedures have been implemented, Sungard AS are able to check, typically on an annual basis, that the controls are working well and propose adjustments if necessary.

Sungard AS anticipates heavy demand for the new service, both from organisations that have regulatory obligations to ensure continuity of supply and also from firms that already commission one-off checks but want to mitigate the risk of business disruption cost-efficiently by implementing tighter controls across their entire supplier base.

If you would like an exploratory discussion about how a Supply Chain Framework Review could benefit your organisation, email avail@sungardas.com

Introducing Adam Barrett
Sungard AS Business Continuity Consultant Adam Barrett is spearheading the development and implementation of Supply Chain Framework Review. A BC professional with specialist expertise in supply chain issues, his experience spans several industry sectors including retail, telecoms and financial services. Adam holds numerous qualifications in a variety of highly relevant fields such as management consultancy, business continuity, risk analysis (in which he gained an MSc from King’s College, London) and information security.
Adam, a former finalist in the BCI Global Awards 2012 ‘Newcomer of the Year’ category, started out on his BC career as a Risk Communications Advisor with the Health & Safety Executive, and gained an insight into supplier issues while working as a sales forecast analyst with leading supermarket chain Sainsbury’s.

IS YOUR BUSINESS READY FOR CHANGE?

By Sungard AS Ireland | December 19, 2014

A Sungard Availability Services-sponsored report by V3 into attitudes towards change confirms the digital workplace is no longer about running fixed processes that remain static; it’s about flexibility, agility and adapting to change. It warns firms that fail to embrace this shift will soon be overtaken by their more agile competitors.

The survey of IT professionals reveals that while more than two-thirds rate being agile and flexible as critical (32%) or important (37%), their ability to change varies greatly. And while many respondents claim to embrace change, the majority (55%) would only consider updating their processes or systems if others had already done so, meaning they are always behind their competitors.

As for timescales, around a third of firms said new projects would take weeks to fulfil while a quarter said their ability to change would take only a matter of days. Although 13% claimed changes could be carried out in a matter of hours, at the other end of the scale, 17% said any changes would require months to roll out, while for a worrying one in 10, this increases to years!

The chief executive is cited as the main driver for change in an organisation (44%) with the IT department seen as another key driver of change (24%). Just 10% named the business development director, and 6% the finance director.

Firms see benefits of agility
Customer service improvements were rated as the top benefit of becoming more agile and flexible, followed by financial benefits: 54% citing cost savings and 51% potential for increased revenues. Interestingly, 53% of respondents see staff productivity and happiness as a benefit. Next came speed, with 51% mentioning getting ahead of competitors, while 49% selected faster speed to market as advantages of embracing change.

However, before firms can start taking advantage of the many benefits of agile IT, they need to overcome major obstacles to change. Cost topped the list of obstacles with two-thirds of respondents overall rating this as the main barrier to change. Outdated technology infrastructure and security concerns were cited by a third while a quarter of business users saw the need for a solid business case for change as a barrier, compared with 19% of IT respondents.

In conclusion, the results indicate most organisations are aware of the value of being able to change frequently and easily, with benefits from cost savings to better customer service on offer. However, this alone is not enough. They need to back up this awareness with a culture of flexibility and agility, implementing processes and systems that support frequent, smooth changes and monitor their impact.

Download the report here

IT GOVERNANCE SURVEY CLAIMS NEGOTIATION IS KEY

By Sungard AS Ireland | December 19, 2014

Sungard Availability Services has partnered with The Register to publish a research paper titled ‘Flexible IT Governance in a Changing World’ that asks how IT governance should respond to the increasing rate of change in the devices and services that users and managers want to use.

On one hand, the evidence is that untracked or uncontrolled use is fatal to governance processes. With an increased regulatory burden (not least, forthcoming EU data protection legislation), this has potentially disastrous consequences. Yet, there is evidence to suggest that the seemingly conflicting needs of the IT department for control and business users for freedom are, in fact, not irreconcilable. The paper argues that when IT prioritises communication, it can actually uncover large areas of consensus.

It also makes the point that proactive IT departments should accommodate user wishes as far as possible – if for no other reason than ignoring them encourages shadow IT.

It warns that no improvement can happen without clarity over who runs the governance process. For functions such as security, this may not be the IT department (although it would still function as a trusted advisor). Devolving responsibility to the business may create a better environment for compliance with governance processes.

The report acknowledges that with so many competing interests and so many dimensions to good governance, it is tempting for an IT department to shy away from attempting to improve the governance process. However, it asserts that there are mechanisms by which the IT department can initiate governance improvements and makes pragmatic recommendations as to how this can be achieved. The research concludes that these efforts will prove worthwhile as rather than flexibility undermining governance, good governance creates flexibility.

Download the full report or view our webcast recording

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION LEVELS REMAIN HIGH

By Sungard AS Ireland | December 19, 2014

We are delighted to share the results of this year’s Customer Satisfaction Survey, which for the first time included Sungard Availability Services Ireland customers.

Thank you to all the 201 randomly selected customers who took time out of their busy schedules to give us their feedback on how we’re performing. The customer split was as follows:

17 are new customers
167 are Recovery Services customers
147 use Managed Datacentre Services
29 use our Consulting Services
14 are Software subscribers

Those of you who are good at maths will quickly notice this equates to more than 201 responses but, of course, several survey respondents subscribe to multiple services.
While we are not complacent, we are pleased to report that overall satisfaction levels remain extremely high at 93%, which is reflected in the percentage of customers who would recommend our services (94%).

Among other notable feedback, 94.5% (the same percentage as in the 2013 survey) said they would continue to subscribe. Encouragingly, our ‘Net Promoter Score’ – a calculation showing promoters less detractors, was 82%, a very high industry score.

As you know, we have continually strived to improve our handling of problems and invoicing. This year these areas have been maintained following the signs of progress we saw last year. Our Customer Services team continues to work on improving our support and responsiveness, which received a 92% satisfaction rating, a slight fall on last year but still strong for our industry.
We were happy to note that customers scored us highly in questions relating to trust, which has increased to 92% this year. Among notable improvements was a score of 87% for delivering what we promise – an increase of 4%. An equal number of customers – 98% – believe they are treated with respect and we are encouraged that the percentage who said they can count on Sungard AS to reach a fair and satisfactory conclusion rose slightly to 91%.

We added several new questions to the survey this year so we can track progress and build a more comprehensive picture of our performance in response to findings from last year’s survey. With On Boarding and Cloud Services priority areas for 2015, we built in additional question areas relating to service management to measure the success of our efforts to implement an ITIL framework during 2014. New questions covered on-boarding into service (benchmark score 73%), site facilities (97.8%), cloud services (87.5%) and project management (80%).

Statistics are important but, as always, respondents’ feedback told the story behind the figures. Comments included “Happy with Sungard AS – no one else would be able to provide us with the level of service we need. We’re gradually moving away from other providers to Sungard AS” and “We have all types of business with them and have no issues at all, which shows consistency across the board. Very good.”

While the survey may be over for another year we welcome your feedback year-round. If you would like to share your opinions on any aspect of our service, please email patrick.morley@sungardas.com

We look forward to hearing your views!

REPORT REVEALS TRUE EXTENT OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION

By Sungard AS Ireland | December 19, 2014

A new report, ‘CIO Perspectives on Digital Disruption’, sponsored by Sungard Availability Services and NetApp, confirms cloud computing has sent waves of disruption through enterprise IT provision. Furthermore, the IDG research reveals the cloud will have a similarly profound impact over the next five years.

Here’s a summary of the report’s main findings:

Service types
SaaS dominates with IaaS, DaaS and CaaS usage broadly equal.

We are seeing steady adoption of the on-demand, pay-as-you-go cloud computing model as IT departments migrate increasing volumes of virtualised workloads and applications into either on- or off-premise data centres built on more efficient unified server, storage and network architectures designed to maximise provisioning speed and capacity utilisation.

Software as a Service (SaaS) remains the most common approach with the emergence of online software suites such as Microsoft Office365 and GoogleApps driving usage.

Advantages understood
But cloud is only one important element in broader digital transformation

The survey reflects splits in cloud platform usage with 67% using SaaS products, 47% Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and 42% Platform as a Service (PaaS).

Outsourced enterprise communications solutions – which typically include Voice over IP (VoIP), telephony, instant messaging collaboration and videoconferencing applications – have also gained traction as organisations replace ageing analogue and digital telephone systems with IP-based alternatives.

Enterprise grade Communications as a Service (CaaS) and Unified CaaS (UCaaS) that use assets owned, managed and colocated by third party service providers are now widely available from companies including Avaya, Ericsson, Microsoft and more recently Cisco, alongside telecommunications companies.

The potential benefits cloud computing can bring to the average enterprise are well understood with 94% saying it had helped their organisation move closer to meeting their business needs.

Benefits centre on maximisation of assets such as servers, storage and network resources, cost efficiencies that align charges more tightly to usage; greater agility in delivering instant processing, storage and software resources to drive new project initiatives; scalability in line with seasonal peaks or commercial expansion; and a low barrier to entry for startups that lack the capital or in-house skills to buy and implement their own IT infrastructure.

Alternative approaches
Where cloud computing is not viable, organisations turn to managed service contracts, hosting providers and staff training programmes

Long before the formalisation of IaaS, SaaS and PaaS services in the early to mid-noughties, enterprise outsourcing of IT provision to a third party was common and is still popular – 48% of respondents reported that extending existing outsourcing arrangements would be the natural alternative to cloud migration.

Disruptive influences
Greater mobility and the flexibility to start new projects quickly through fast, simple provisioning seen as most important benefits

Parallel advances in mobile technology over the last decade have resulted in large numbers of powerful smartphones and tablet computers finding their way into the hands of consumers and business users alike, most of which lend themselves very well to accessing cloud-hosted applications and services.

Other benefits include support for remote working and mobile users (cited by 72%), with ease of globalising the workforce quoted by 59%. The flexibility afforded by being able to start projects more quickly without instigating onerous IT procurement processes was considered extremely or very important by 69%, particularly when securing high compute capacity on demand (69%) and to support software testing and development projects (67%). Other drivers include being able to scale user numbers up or down (66%) and the quick, simple provisioning of hardware and software through an easy-to-use web interface (68%).

Key concerns
Executives harbour continuing doubts around cloud security, data protection, governance costs and performance

The many high profile incidents of data loss and security breaches that have led fines by regulators, reputational damage and lost business over the last decade means no organisation can afford to take risks concerning data protection, privacy and governance.

What is not immediately clear however is where that data is more safe – in hosting facilities owned and managed by a third party or on-premise servers operated by the internal IT department, which may or may not have equivalent levels of security certification and knowledge of regulatory requirements and processes. Whilst the perception amongst executives is that sensitive data is better protected the closer it is and the more tightly they can control it, this is not necessarily true.

Nonetheless, cloud security doubts remain with 58% citing security and 41% data protection, privacy and governance as areas of concern which continues to fuel the need for Hybrid IT.

Apprehension around application and service performance (availability – cited by 30%) and scepticism about the long-term financial viability of the cloud service provider (17%) remain common themes.

Snowden affair damaged trust
Up to 31% of cloud contracts delayed, terminated or cancelled

The survey results indicate the extent to which the Snowden affair has coloured corporate attitudes to cloud services. Only 26% said the affair had done nothing to dent their confidence while 74% admitted it had affected them personally or company decision-makers although 58% said the episode had led to nothing more serious than extended debate. Almost half (46%) said they had seen an increased emphasis on cloud security specifically, but close to a third (31%) said their organisation had either delayed planned cloud service migration initiatives or implementations as a direct result of the revelations.

Increased security concerns led to at least one cloud service contract being terminated in 23% of those organisations and 18% saw cancellations of planned services.

There is also evidence to suggest cloud service purchase orders have come under greater scrutiny at executive level with 22% admitting to greater top down interference in buying or leasing decisions.

Future disruptions
Big data analytics, BYOD, wearable technology and the Internet of Things predicted to be future major disruptive influences

Although arguably the very definition of a disruptive technology is one that appears out of nowhere and quickly goes mainstream, big data, BYOD, wearable computers, machine-to-machine communications (M2M) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are tipped to have a sweeping impact in what seems to be set to be the year of digital disruption.

Download the report