2015 OFF TO A FLYING START

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Welcome to the first edition of AVAIL in 2015!

In our first story Keith Tilley, EVP Global Sales and Customer Service Management, makes his predictions for the next 12 months and looks at how businesses can navigate what looks set to be an IT minefield of a year.  While on the subject of strategy, elsewhere we share the findings of a new report into disruptive technologies that are forcing organisations to make strategic changes.

I’m pleased to announce no fewer than four new Sungard AS services launching in the first half of the year, starting with Desktop as a Service, which has been developed in collaboration with some of the biggest names in the business and we believe beats anything in the market today. We’ll be announcing details later this month but you can be the first to find out about it here. Then there’s the FCA Assessment Service, which will objectively compare your company’s resilience against specific regulatory requirements, Oracle Cloud Service, a more cost-effective secure and flexible way to run your Oracle applications and, last but not least, our Residency Service, which could be the answer to your skills gap.

In home news Sungard AS Ireland has been awarded ISO 27001:2013 certification, giving you the reassurance it achieves the highest levels of information security management. In the UK, Sungard AS UK is delighted to be accepted on to G-Cloud 6, which places them among a handful of cloud providers accredited to offer ‘Official Sensitive’ (formerly IL3) cloud services.

From France we bring you news of an innovative peer support programme that gives CIOs an unexpected ally – would it work here in Ireland I wonder?

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 format. Just send your comments to the editor at avail@sungardas.com

Gary Watson

General Manager Ireland

HOW ENTERPRISE IT WILL NAVIGATE THE IT MINEFIELD

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By Keith Tilley, Executive Vice President, Global Sales & Customer Services, Sungard Availability Services

The IT landscape is becoming even more complex. It seems every year businesses are confronted with more issues and potential pitfalls to navigate around – not only to remain competitive, but to avoid loss of reputation and customer trust.

Upcoming legislation like the EU Data Protection directive will mean more pressure to secure mission-critical data and CIOs must ensure they do everything in their power to protect customer information. It’s the same story in the public sector: with ministers under increased scrutiny thanks to the 2015 election, mistakes and data losses will simply not be tolerated.

Alongside increased pressure on governance and compliance, organisations are expecting IT departments to make a greater contribution to business objectives – difficult when so much time and resources are tied up simply keeping the lights on.

The top six trends shaping enterprise IT in 2015:

1. Increased Value in Services:
The cost of raw infrastructure is already plummeting thanks to price-wars between the biggest providers so customers now look beyond raw infrastructure for value.

But with many IT departments moving away from the traditional maintenance model and looking to demonstrate business value through innovation and a focus on the application-layer, organisations no longer have the expertise in-house.

Recent research shows a rise in the number of businesses turning to MSPs(1). With IT priorities shifting from reducing costs to creating agile, flexible work environments, businesses will look for technology partners capable of helping them to deliver their IT strategy as well as keeping the lights on.

2. Investing in Orchestration
With their traditional role shifting, we will start to see CIOs throw out the outdated ‘command and control’ model of infrastructure governance. Instead, IT leaders will embrace data centre orchestration technologies that offer seamless infrastructure performance with data moving freely across hybrid IT infrastructures.

This will allow CIOs to continue to pull away from the ‘dirty’ infrastructure work, focusing on demonstrating real value to the business and delivering a competitive edge.

3. Increased data compliance pressure
Companies’ data protection and compliance policies are coming under increased scrutiny and this will only intensify with new EU laws on data regulation coming in 2017. These will significantly increase businesses’ responsibility for critical data with potentially heavy sanctions for mishandling, or failing to take every step possible to protect it.  This ruling will greatly impact business models based on use or management of data such as cloud, Bring-Your-Own-Device and datacentre storage.

We will see more debates around whose responsibility this is. MSPs should prepare for a huge influx of queries from customers about their data so a thorough understanding of the new regulation will be crucial. 2017 might seem far-off but the radical legal changes will require organisations to work hard over the next two years to have a chance of complying and avoiding substantial fines.

4. The general election
With politicians already limbering up for the election, IT service providers need to ready themselves for the imminent debate. Austerity will continue, with the government looking to reduce spend dramatically while simultaneously demonstrating value to the public.

And thanks to the sensitive nature of government data, vendors will need to jump through hoops regarding infrastructure considerations and information security classifications.  For smaller Independent Software Vendors this could be a problem and it’s one we’ll see solved through high profile partnerships with MSPs that provide not only the technology, but also the accreditations needed to bid successfully for government contracts.

5. The rise of Desktop as a Service
2015 will create even greater demand for Desktop as a Service (DaaS). Employees’ expectations are rising and with more and more ‘Generation Y’ workers entering the workforce, IT departments are finding it increasingly challenging to keep pace with technology demands(2). For some millennials, the tech package combined with flexible working practices is a major factor when considering potential employers.  This trend is only set to grow, especially with further adoption of flexible working laws.

All employees now expect to access critical data and key applications from any location or device and companies need to ensure they make headway towards providing this.

6. Coping with Cloud Complexity
With over three-quarters of UK organisations formally adopting at least one cloud-based service, cloud is now mainstream.  However, while the cloud initially promised to cut IT complexity, many CIOs have found themselves with a new set of challenges.  Many early cloud adopters rushed in and only looked at the short-term benefits  so now find themselves caught up in an intricate network of vendors, none of which have integrated clouds.

We’ll see businesses looking to extricate themselves from multiple IT environments – streamlining their estate as they understand that cloud computing is not a technical achievement, but a tool to deliver a specific business outcome.

Forward-looking CIOs will see that the key to successful cloud deployments is responsibly consuming cloud alongside the business’s other physical and virtual environments.  Hybrid IT will precede truly integrated Hybrid Cloud, and may, indeed, be essential to it.

Download Sungard AS’s ‘CIO Perspectives on Digital Disruption’ report by IDG Market Insight

 

(1) IDG Market Insight, CIO Perspectives on Digital Disruption: 45% of CIOs would explore the possibility of working more closely with hosting and MSPs
(2) IDG Market Insight, CIO Perspectives on Digital Disruption: 72% CIOs cite support for remote and/or mobile working as very or extremely important

DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES FORCE STRATEGY CHANGE

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A new report(1) commissioned by Sungard Availability Services reveals that data analytics and big data are the most disruptive technologies driving change in their organisations, cited by over half of IT directors.The survey of 100 IT chiefs in small and medium-sized companies with between 500 and 1,000 employees and large companies of up to 100,000 employees, and in some cases more, reveals that digital disruption is becoming the norm.

Other key disruptive technologies identified by IT chiefs include bring your own device, or BYOD, (48%); social media (47%); and a mobile workforce (40%).

However, while constant change is unavoidable, the survey reveals that IT leaders are understandably anxious to ensure any transition is pain-free, without disruption to users and a minimal risk of system downtime.

They know that in a world that never sleeps, IT downtime means losing customers and business to rivals. Over a third (38%) of CIOs demand less than one hour of downtime a year for mission-critical IT systems; 8% require downtime to be no higher than one minute a year!

The research shows that increasing volumes of structured and unstructured data, and the adoption of new ways of working and interacting with customers, present opportunities and challenges that IT must respond to with agility, and without business disruption.

The survey reveals over a third of IT chiefs regard software as a service, or SaaS, (33%) and cloud infrastructure services (35%) as disruptive technologies, particularly when IT departments are migrating from their legacy technologies.

The most popular investments for around half of respondents is business intelligence technology (46%), cloud computing (44%), mobile computing (43%) and updating legacy hardware (43%).

Other plans include updating operating systems (27%); developing social networking technology (21%); moving to an internal service model provider (17%); and, perhaps with more optimism than some in the current climate of austerity, increasing the IT budget (14%).

Shadow IT is a thorny topic for many IT chiefs, with nearly a quarter (22%) actively discouraging other departments from deploying their own IT systems. For just under half (46%) of respondents, the IT department is responsible for all the IT in their organisation. Interestingly, more than a tenth (11%) of IT chiefs are aware of the existence of shadow IT but turn a blind eye, which has potential implications for security and efficiency.

The report shows organisations are not embracing change for the sake of change but are pursuing disruptive technologies for the identified benefits they can bring. For instance, improved customer experience is a goal for nearly three-quarters (73%) of organisations.

The study also looks at corporate attitudes towards social media, the changing role of the CIO and differences between ‘digital natives’ and dare we say more mature users.

Download the report here

(1) TechTarget – Disruptive Technologies – a Catalyst for Innovation

SUNGARD AS IRELAND GAINS ISO 27001 CERTIFICATION

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We’re delighted to share the news with you that, in January this year, Sungard Availability Services Ireland gained ISO 27001:2013 certification, signifying that it achieves the highest levels of information security management.

ISO_27001_2013_CERTIFIED_LOGO_RGB

By attaining the standard for its enterprise-grade shared private cloud environment and managed service offering, Sungard AS Ireland has proved to an independent third party that it has developed and implemented a best-in-class information security management system, both for itself and its customers.

The standard gives organisations an internationally recognised, independent verification that Sungard AS is able to securely manage information, maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and availability of all data. This will give added reassurance to our Ireland customer base that their mission-critical information is both safe and readily accessible.

“Ireland has established itself not only as a technology hub in its own right but as an access point for US businesses looking to enter the European market. And as host to the European headquarters of some of the world’s most influential IT companies, data protection in the region is vitally important,” explained Andrew Barber, chief security officer, EMEA and APAC for Sungard AS.

“Being endorsed by an independent and internationally recognised body will bring further piece of mind to customers in Ireland and assure them that as their partner of choice for cloud or managed hosting, resilience and information availability is built into all aspects of our business, from strategic planning to day-to-day operations.”

 

DESKTOP AS A SERVICE WITH 100% AVAILABILITY

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Sungard Availability Services’ Desktop as a Service (DaaS), developed in collaboration with market leaders Cisco, Citrix and NetApp, is now available. It gives employees full access to all of their business applications, enabling them to work wherever they want. At the same time it allows firms to exploit and adapt to seasonal peaks and troughs in demand, quickly provisioning staff with the applications they need whenever and wherever they need them.

Virtual Desktops has been around for a while but it’s only now that technological developments, better security and more competitive pricing have finally enabled DaaS to finally become mainstream, with 2015 dubbed ‘The year of the virtual desktop’.

Sungard AS’s DaaS credentials are well-proven. With decades of experience building resilient productions and recovery environments, we already have the knowledge, skills and infrastructure in place, making DaaS a natural progression of our existing services.

Like all other Sungard AS managed services, a combination of people, processes and technology are our differentiators:

  • Collaboratively designed and built by the world’s best vendors
  • Consultancy-led service to help customers avoid VDI pitfalls
  • World-class resilient hosting infrastructure
  • Choice of 100% and 99.95% Availability SLAs
  • IT department support
  • End user support
  • Seamless recovery into our Workplace Recovery Centres

It all adds up to a service that helps customers overcome the scale and complexity of migrating to a virtual desktop environment that is highly resilient and results in a great user experience.

DaaS typically cuts recovery time into workplace facilities by more than 60% to no more than a couple of hours after the initial operating system images have been rolled out.

DaaS is already attracting considerable interest from companies keen to reduce their cost of ownership, eliminate the annual PC refresh cycle and gain greater control and security over their desktops. Designed for companies with 200 or more PCs, the first step in the move to DaaS is an assessment by a senior consultant to evaluate whether the service is right for the organisation.

Sungard AS’s consultancy-led service can help both firms who eagerly adopted DaaS in its infancy but perhaps underspecified their requirements resulting in a sluggish service, and those that have been wary of dipping their toes in the water until now. Whatever stage a company is at, as their DaaS partner we can help them avoid the pitfalls inherent in attempting to implement DaaS by themselves.

Reasons to choose Desktop as a Service from Sungard AS:

  • Flexibility – production and recovery locations at whichever location suits you
  • Peace of mind – built by some of the biggest names in the business: Cisco, Citrix, NetApp and Sungard AS
  • True resilience – 100% SLA-backed levels of availability
  • Seamlessly integrated production and recovery environments
  • Scalable infrastructure delivered over a cloud environment
  • Transformative consultancy that doesn’t merely reproduce what you have but improves on it, adding value

 

Download our whitepaper to  find out what 110 C-Level executives had to say about their current usage and attitudes to desktop virtualisation technology

If you’d like to discuss whether Sungard AS’s new Desktop as a Service could benefit your organisation email avail@sungardas.com or call 0800 143 413

HOW WOULD THE FCA VIEW YOUR RESILIENCE?

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Sungard Availability Services is launching a new service for financial services firms that need to demonstrate that they have effective resilience and continuity capabilities and that there is good governance in place – particularly in terms of IT that supports the business.

This FCA Assessment Service is designed to give customers an independent view of their business continuity programme’s maturity and its alignment with FCA/PRA regulatory requirements. It specifically looks at areas that have been highlighted by the FCA as key areas of concern across the sector:

  • Management leadership and commitment – assessing senior management’s understanding of the issues and the degree to which they are providing a mandate and momentum for continuity and resilience.
  • Policy and requirements – reviewing the organisation’s formal approach to continuity and resilience, together with the mechanisms used to define requirements and whether these are appropriate.
  • Understanding critical IT and risks – whether the organisation understands how IT supports the critical business processes that are the subject of regulation and does it understand the various criticalities within IT? Is there a clear IT operational risk appetite or planning to mitigate the potential impact of systems outages on consumers?
  • Strategies for continuity and resilience – principally as they apply to IT. Has the company approached the choice of strategies in the right way and are the appropriate strategies in place?
  • Monitor and review – how is exercising and testing undertaken? Are the right processes in place to determine the scope and objectives of testing? What happens after testing? How frequently does testing take place and what is tested? How is information fed back in improving the continuity and resilience of the business?

We then produce a report that identifies gaps, recommends remedial work that should be completed to close the gaps and provides a roadmap of priorities.

The new service is likely to appeal to small and medium-sized financial services firms who are unsure whether the BCM programme they have in place is effective or who want guidance on the programme of activities they need to implement to assure the regulator of their preparedness and mitigate the threat of a potentially costly Section 166 notice being imposed.

If you’d like to discuss whether the FCA Assessment Service could benefit your organisation, contact your Sungard AS account manager or email us at avail@sungardas.com.

A BETTER WAY TO RUN ORACLE APPLICATIONS & DATABASES

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If your company’s applications use Oracle, then Sungard Availability Services can now offer you a more cost-effective, secure and flexible way to run them. Our new Oracle Cloud Service brings you all the benefits of market-leading Oracle software with the high availability, security and flexibility that come as standard with any Sungard AS offering.

Available from April, our Oracle Cloud Service is specifically designed to run your Oracle applications and databases, either in production or for disaster recovery, alleviating the headaches of infrastructure maintenance, updates and lifecycle management. And because the service is provided by Sungard AS you have the assurance of the high performance levels needed to support enterprise business applications and databases backed by cast-iron Service Level Agreements.
As an Oracle Gold Partner with a proven track record going back over 15 years, Sungard AS is a provider you can trust.

The service is built on certified Oracle Red Stack and delivered to you from world-class cloud hosted environments, located in multiple Sungard AS UK data centres, collaboratively designed and accredited by Oracle.  The service is also available from Sungard AS North America data centres.

The cloud service/utility model converts the cost from the capital budget to become an operating expense. This avoids you having to tie up valuable capital and frees your in-house IT team to focus on projects that add value to your business rather than spend their time on routine housekeeping tasks.

With a choice of availability options, contract periods and range of add-on services, the service is cost-effective and highly flexible. This means you can size your environment around what you need today rather than at some distant point in the future. This extends to licences too as the Sungard AS Oracle Cloud Service is fully compliant and optimised for Oracle licensing. Sungard AS offers optional consultancy services that provide a detailed analysis of current and future licence usage, avoiding overprovisioning.

Think of our Oracle Cloud service like a giant cake. Just as you may only want a slice rather than the whole calorie-laden offering, you may not need all the pricey licences that typically come as standard with your server. By satisfying your desire for an Oracle Cloud Service through a managed service provider like Sungard AS you are freed to pay only for the precise number of licences you actually need.

In fact, simplified deployment, thanks to on-demand provisioning and seamless ramp-up of resources as and when you need them, is one of the big benefits of buying your Oracle services in this way.

Another is that it resolves Oracle support and licence constraints for those customers who have non-Oracle environments.

“Mention the Sungard AS name in the context of security and that issue’s off the table.”
Eric Andresen, VP Support Operations, DAZ Systems Inc

Benefits at a glance:

  • Gives you greater control, security and management over your Oracle environment
  • Avoids the build costs of additional in-house data centre space and resilience measures
  • Converts hefty capital expenditure to a predictable monthly operating expense
  • Increases the resilience of your organisation
  • Frees your in-house IT team to work more productively
  • Allows you to scale up, or down, in line with business demands
  • Integrates seamlessly with a wide range of optional services including Sungard Managed Cloud, Managed Database Service, Managed OS, Vaulting Services, Recovery as a Service, Network Connectivity, Security Services and Desktop as a Service

If you’d like to find out more, download our brochure, email us at avail@sungardas.com or call us on 0800 143 413.

SHORTAGE OF IT SPECIALISTS STARTS TO BITE

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With employment in the IT industry predicted to grow the current shortage of skilled IT professionals is set to persist. Organisations are now paying the price for laying off experienced staff when the recession hit, the preference over the past decade for outsourcing overseas rather than developing home grown IT talent and the nation’s failure to nurture advanced STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) skills.

As firms enter the post-recession economy, priorities have shifted from cost control into driving significant technology and transformation initiatives that will allow them to achieve a faster time to market and gain a competitive advantage. IT must respond to business needs as they strive for greater productivity. This is despite increasing difficulty in acquiring specialised expertise, especially in the UK where the digital economy is growing exponentially.

In fact, a recent survey by the CBI showed that 39% of firms are already struggling to recruit workers with the advanced technical skills they need, and 41% believe the shortage will persist over the next three years. Consequently, analyst Gartner suggests eight out of ten companies are likely to find their growth plans curtailed by a lack of skilled data centre specialists by 2016(1).

Against this backdrop Sungard Availability Services has developed its new Residency Service. This is a staff augmentation service that will provide technical and service specialists to perform project-related tasks or business as usual operational activities for existing customers struggling to resource their IT function for a variety of reasons.  This might be because:

  • They are trying to find a specific set of skills
  • Have a short term project
  • Trouble recruiting talent to a specific location
  • Budget or policy limitations such as a headcount freeze

Sungard AS customers such as Serco have found the benefits of a Residency Service include:

  • Faster time to engagement: The time to engagement for placing a resource in our customers can be measured in days rather than weeks
  • Better control of staff: The customer’s IT department manages the resources from beginning to end within a project but is able to engage Sungard AS should any situation occur to resolve issues quickly and effectively
  • Improved integration with internal processes: It can be easier to integrate staff augmentation resources with existing business processes than align those processes with external project teams.
  • Leverages existing resources: By adding new skill sets to the team, a company can take advantage of both external and internal resources for the completion of their IT projects.
  • Access to specialist expertise: When gaps in a project team require specialist skills, staff augmentation can efficiently fill them. As Sungard AS is vendor-impartial our staff are multi skilled, accustomed to working in a multiple vendor environment.
  • Rapidly changing staffing needs: Companies with staffing needs in constant flux can meet those needs through staff augmentation. It’s relatively easy to scale up or down to match demand.
  • Reduced cost of acquiring skills: Avoids the cost of investing in internal skill development.
  • Reduce employer burdens: Avoids costs and liabilities of direct employees.
  • Help meeting aggressive project timelines: When an active project has a need for more resources in order to be completed on time, staff augmentation is typically the best option (and sometimes the only option).
  • Greater internal acceptance: Existing employees are less likely to feel threatened by augmenting staff with a few individuals than by outsourcing entire projects.
  • Ease of adoption: It’s generally easier to adopt a staff augmentation model than a project outsourcing model. Companies are already used to hiring employees so staff augmentation is just a small shift from what companies already do.

The Residency Service is being rolled out in the first half of this year. If you’d like to discuss whether it could benefit your organisation, contact your account manager or email us at avail@sungardas.com for more information.

 

(1) Source: Gartner – 24 September 2014 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2853917

 

PROGRAMME OFFERS SUPPORT TO ISOLATED CIOs

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Sungard Availability Services in France has launched a programme designed to provide support to CIOs following research that revealed they often feel isolated in their role. Their first 100 days in office – the very time when they are making critical decisions transforming their organisation’s IT – were highlighted as a particularly difficult period.

France marketing manager Emmanuelle Servaye who pioneered the programme explains, “CIOs feel they cannot talk freely to their C-Suite colleagues who do not appreciate the immense challenges they face. Generally, a CIO can’t talk about IT transformation with his or her team due to the sensitivity over jobs, nor can they open up to relative strangers at business networking events. So I saw an opportunity to support the CIO and position ourselves as a trusted partner here to help.”

The programme provides peer support, advice and mentoring to help CIOs perform effectively and be seen by their colleagues to add value to the business by pursuing a strategy of enterprise availability. It consists of three channels:

  • A vibrant online communityfeaturing informative articles on availability and IT transformation issues, as well as general business topics of interest to CIOs with articles and comment contributed by outside companies and CIOs themselves. Somewhat worryingly, the most popular article so far is titled ‘How to detect the first signs of burnout’ so the site seems to provide a much-needed supportive, nurturing environment with lots of help, advice and tips for overworked and unappreciated IT leaders.
  • A guide for CIOs on what to do in their first 100 days in office, which offers expert help to CIOs with their IT transformation challenges.
  • A unique peer mentoring programme. This scheme, the first of its kind in France, has been eagerly greeted by both CIOs wanting to be mentored and business people keen to act as mentors. Ten pairs have been matched on the basis of compatibility, location and industry sector from the floods of people who applied and are now working together.

If successful in France, the CIO programme may be extended to other countries across Europe. But would you want this? Would it help? We’d love to hear your feedback so please do email us at avail@sungardas.com.

Download the First 100 Days guide here

UK News: G-CLOUD 6 ACCEPTANCE

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Sungard Availability Services UK has been successful in being accepted on to ‘G-Cloud 6’, the latest version of the UK Government’s cloud framework which took effect last month. This places Sungard AS UK among a select handful of cloud providers that are accredited to offer ‘Official Sensitive’ (previously known as ‘IL3’) cloud services.

It means Sungard AS UK are authorised to offer our portfolio of managed services to public sector organisations through the Digital Marketplace (formerly called the CloudStore). This is the shop window not only for central government departments but also other public bodies such as local councils, the emergency services, education authorities and the NHS.

Sungard AS UK has already seen some large, high profile contract wins as a result of G-Cloud accreditation. These include Border Force (part of the Home Office), Her Majesty’s Passport Office where they are working with a third party to provide a facial recognition solution, and the replacement programme for the old GWS platform which is migrating all data to Sungard AS infrastructure.

Sungard As’s proven ability to deliver scalable hybrid solutions, collaborative approach and flexibility were cited as being key factors in the contract wins.

To find out more email us at avail@sungardas.com

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

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We are delighted to announce more confirmed dates in the Sungard Availability Services 2015 events programme:

Cloud Expo Europe

11 – 12 March 2015
Excel, London
Sungard Availability Services will be sponsoring and participating in Cloud Expo Europe – Europe’s biggest and best attended cloud conference and exhibition. Visitors will have the opportunity to hear from over 300 leading speakers, including Sungard AS, who make up the conference programme and learn firsthand from dozens of case-studies including major blue chips, the public sector as well as dynamic SMEs.

Our very own Metin Algir will talk about ‘Architecting for the future with hybrid IT’ in the Virtualisation, Infrastructure & Storage theatre from 12.15pm to 12.40pm on Wednesday 11 March and from 10.45am to 11.10am on Thursday 12 March in the Cloud Innovations theatre.

Register for your free ticket here and come and visit us on stand 760!

Cloud Banking Europe

14 and 15 April 2015
QEII Conference Centre, London, SW1
Sungard AS will play an active role in this first large-scale gathering of industry experts in the cloud banking domain worldwide. Cloud specialists Phil Laslett and Metin Algir will be sharing their knowledge and experience in a thought-provoking presentation titled ‘Balancing aspiration with reality: hybrid IT experiences in a changing world’. We will also run a cloud problem-solving clinic and host a 60 minute lunchtime briefing with the CBI.

If you’re in the banking sector and want to know more about how cloud computing can help you meet the demands of increasingly tech-savvy customers, this is an event not to be missed. Come and see us on stand 7!