Resilience takes centre stage with widespread cloud adoption

By |

EIU report cover_250Sungard Availability Services has sponsored research from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research and analysis arm of the Economist Group (of the magazine), into cloud resilience.

Recognising that today it is not enough to just react to disaster or disruption but rather to attain a state of organisational resilience, the study explores what CIOs need to do to exploit the cloud’s potential to achieve this goal.

‘Cloud Complexity: The Need for Resilience’ asks how companies can achieve continuity and agility in the cloud and looks at what challenges must be overcome to succeed.

Organisational resilience is about proactively anticipating and preparing for future events, both sudden and gradual, to bounce back more quickly. It’s about setting sights higher than mere business survival to achieving business prosperity by increasing agility, speed and innovation. Expanding responsibility to involve the whole company in the process is critical to achieve these goals.

This is because the more complex goal of attaining resilience is intricately linked to an organisation’s overall business strategy and requires broader mobilisation of corporate capabilities across an organisation—from human resources managers to department heads to those who oversee supply chains. They will need to organise everything ranging from business processes to internal controls to capture value and mitigate the risk inherent in cloud opportunities.

EIU_Fig1

With cloud use now almost universal among organisations and only expected to grow, researchers interviewed senior executives at 304 companies with annual revenues of more than $50m across a variety of industries in the UK, France and US. They found organisational resilience is a top priority for the survey respondents. And 72% say the importance of organisational resilience will increase over the next three years.

Organisational resilience is defined by the BSI in its BS 65000 Standard as the ability to both quickly bounce back from a major disruption and to “anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to events—both sudden shocks and gradual change” to survive and prosper.

In fact, according to Lyndon Bird, technical director at BCI, the field of Business Continuity Management (BCM) is shifting its focus from BCM to organisational resilience. Business continuity strives to prepare an organisation for effective responses to sudden, major disruptions with minimal business impact. Organisational resilience, in contrast, alters the management posture from a reactive one to proactively anticipating and preparing for future disruption—and not just sudden cataclysmic ones, but also gradual strategic shifts.

When planning how to achieve their agility goals, 41% of companies say they plan to adopt new technologies. Of these, the cloud, emerges as the leading enabler of resilience. As Tanuja Randery, President, UK & Ireland at French electronics conglomerate Schneider Electric, notes, “Companies are no longer considering whether to migrate to the cloud but rather what…and how best to migrate.”

However, security has always been seen as the chief challenge in cloud adoption and the survey confirmed that perceptions have not changed. More than half (53%) of respondents are concerned about security breaches and leaks of confidential data while 52% were worried about disruption from cyberattacks.

EIU_Fig6

But while security fears are undoubtedly a barrier to cloud adoption, four in ten (41%) actually cite enhanced security in the cloud as a benefit.

One interviewee gave a possible explanation as to why the cloud triumphs over security concerns. Noting the heavy investments cloud providers have made to address the security challenges, he said, “It is much easier today to provide 100% uptime so the cloud is actually a better place for security…On-premise is more risky.”

The business continuity agenda has traditionally been part of the risk and compliance function which has struggled to gain broader buy-in from other parts of the business — primarily because it has been considered by other functions as “not our problem”. Consequently, the increased emphasis on attaining resilience is achieving what BCM only rarely could – gaining prominence at the highest levels of an organisation.

The report summarises the five key things the IT department needs to do to allow cloud computing to play a positive role in achieving corporate resilience, namely addressing:

  1. Specialist and regulatory requirements
  2. Systems integration and governance
  3. Data integrity and process re-engineering
  4. Ongoing service and maintenance
  5. People and skill set re-alignment

Download the full report here

Keith’s Welcome: Looking beyond business continuity

By |

Welcome to this winter edition of AVAIL, which is packed with news and features that make informative and, hopefully, thought-provoking reading.

We feature three pieces of research in this issue. Firstly, the findings of our latest global research with the Economist, which shows achieving organisational resilience is a top priority for CIOs. In this vein, our in-house expert Dr Sandra Bell explains why today resilience, rather than business continuity management, should be the ultimate goal for those serious about ensuring availability.

Secondly, as part of our Tame the Bear campaign, we asked IT decision-makers and employees about the biggest IT issues confronting their industry today – see what they told us here.

Thirdly, we invite you to participate in the Little Book of IT, which will give an inside look at how IT leaders are taming the challenges they face in 2017. This is a unique opportunity to join your peers in reshaping how the industry thinks about IT next year. Not only will your views influence how other IT leaders make buying decisions, but by taking part in the research you’ll be eligible to receive a free copy of the final printed hardback book to keep.

The bigger we get, the more important it is to keep in touch with our customers and see our business through their eyes. So I would like to add my personal thanks to all those customers who took the time to share their views with us on the service they receive in our annual customer satisfaction survey. You can see their feedback here.

And I am delighted to introduce you to Carmel Owens, our new General Manager for Ireland, who has great plans to take the Irish business forward.

As always, I hope you enjoy this issue and my team welcomes your feedback on any aspect of the magazine. Just send your comments to the editor at AVAIL@sungardas.com. In the meantime, I and the rest of the Sungard AS team wish you and your families a happy and healthy festive season.

Keith Tilley

EVP, global sales and customer services management

Growing from business continuity to organisational resilience

By |

By Dr Sandra Bell
Head of Business Continuity & ISDG Consulting (Europe), Sungard Availability Services

 

CEOs have long understood to survive and prosper they need to adapt to (and influence) their external environment. Their role is to direct corporate strategy, which involves looking both inward at the strengths and weaknesses of the company and outward at external factors that can affect the organisation using various analytical techniques.

However, the world is constantly changing and organisations’ corporate strategy must constantly adapt to keep up with it. Failing to adapt to change generally leads to business failure.  In 1990, Richard Pascale famously claimed that “Nothing fails like success” by which he meant that what was a strength yesterday becomes the root of weakness today. Relentless change requires that businesses continuously reinvent themselves yet we tend to depend on what worked yesterday and refuse to let go of what worked so well for us in the past. To avoid this trap, businesses must stimulate a spirit of inquiry and healthy debate. They must encourage a creative process of self-renewal based on constructive conflict. Ten years later, Gary Hamel wrote about ‘Strategic decay’, the premise of which, in a nutshell, is that the value of every strategy, no matter how brilliant, will decay over time.

While corporate strategy needs to be able to deal with change both gradual change (described by Charles Handy in 1989 as “strategic drift”) and rapid (“transformational”) change caused by discontinuities or ‘exogenous shocks’, resilient organisations also need to deal with perturbations, deviations and disruptions.

For example, let’s assume there are two competing coffee shops on a high street that is prone to seasonal flooding and power outages. Due to the fact that the high street floods regularly it would not be unreasonable for both coffee shops to have business continuity plans that involve the use of sandbags to prevent floodwater entering the premises and backup power generation to keep the equipment in the shop running in the event of power outages.

During normal flooding and/or power outage events both businesses deploy their sandbags and/or power backups and are able to continue serving coffee to their respective customers.

However, if the flood was more severe than anticipated, customers and suppliers may not be able to negotiate the flooded high street to reach the coffee shops. Likewise, the power outage may last longer and be more widespread than anticipated, affecting the coffee shops’ customers in their own homes.

The coffee shop reliant on its business continuity solution would concentrate on protecting its tangible assets and wait for the floodwaters to recede and the power to be restored before re-opening for business.

In contrast, a resilient coffee shop would immediately set about working out how to meet its customers’ needs despite the flooding and power loss. It may, for example, draw on its wide network of contacts to borrow a boat enabling employees to travel through the floodwaters and deliver coffee and baked goods direct to peoples’ homes or places of work and bring in supplies. It may also decide to temporarily diversify its range of food to ensure that local vulnerable people receive hot food despite a lack of power in their homes.

The response of both coffee shops is equally valid. However, the customer goodwill towards the resilient coffee shop is likely to ensure that its competitive advantage and market share remain high long after the floodwaters have receded.

Today’s consumers expect organisations to be resilient

Furthermore, today’s consumers are facilitated by information technology and have an ever-increasing expectation for 24/7 service 365 days a year. If they can’t buy exactly what they want, when they want, from their normal source they can now shop around globally. This means that if organisations do not have agile corporate strategies and resilience that enables them to respond successfully to market volatility, economic uncertainties, fluctuations in energy and commodity rates and global security instabilities and operational disruptions they can easily lose market share and confidence to new and non-traditional competitors.

A complex global commercial environment may be good at driving business efficiency but a rise in consumerism is driving a local business model and woe betide the organisation that does not heed this.

“Today’s consumers expect the modern organisation to be both agile and resilient”

Likewise, gone are the days when customers were happy to accept downtime while a heroic recovery was executed. They would much rather trust an organisation who successfully anticipates and manages risk in a calm and measured manner. In other words, today’s consumers expect the modern organisation to be both agile and resilient – it always delivers on its value proposition regardless of the negative stresses it encounters. It also means that resilience is a core, and valuable, business differentiator in today’s rapidly changing and volatile business environment. In fact, research suggests the need for organisational resilience will only increase.

EIU_Fig1

How to achieve resilience?

Resilience means having the will, skill and capability to adapt in a positive manner to both a changing and fluctuating environment. However, the modern organisation is a complex beast and it is not always easy to get every part of the organisation to work together. Most organisations find it hard enough keeping their corporate strategy up to speed – and therefore the thought of trying to respond collectively to a temporary fluctuation or disruption often falls into the too difficult pile. This means that organisations at best rely on Business Continuity alone and, at worst, keep their fingers crossed and hope for the best when faced with disruption.

To be resilient an organisation needs three things:

  • An executive who makes a conscious decision to adapt to disruption together with the skill and ability to orchestrate the organisation to do so in real time
  • The organisation as a whole possessing the capability, mandate and confidence to adapt and evolve as and when required
  • An understanding of the relationships and resources the organisation can and may need to access from others to aid their response

When questioned about the barriers to achieving resilience, a recent Sungard Availability Services-sponsored survey by IDG Connect revealed that effective leadership and immutable IT infrastructures are seen as the two biggest barriers to achieving corporate resilience.

Additionally, as the modern business is almost completely reliant on information technology then there has been little incentive to make other parts of the business agile if they are anchored to IT systems that are rigid, slow and expensive to change.

However, by following a few simple steps, the cloud can now change all this and offer the agility, flexibility and lower lifecycle costs necessary to free up the rest of the organisation to adapt and evolve, even in the face of the most transitory operational disruptions.

As with any new capability, skills need to be developed to harness the benefits, and this is where Sungard Availability Services’ Consultants can help. In addition to helping an organisation’s IT department implement the five key cloud requirements for resilience (see the EIU article for the list), they also provide services such as:

  • Resilience Maturity Assessments to help organisations determine their strengths and weaknesses and build a roadmap for the most cost-effective way to develop resilience capability and skills.
  • Executive Coaching and Masterclasses to help develop skills such as crisis decision-making, resilience command and control, and how executives can effectively balance obligations to multiple stakeholders while under stress.
  • Strategy and Planning – Helping organisations develop plans that are flexible to meet changing situations; make best use of their internal resources and leverage external resources and relationships.
  • Exercising & Testing – Providing a safe environment where organisations can develop, test and assess their resilience skills and capabilities.

If you’d like to discuss how our consulting team can help your organisation improve its resilience, call us on 0800 143 413 or email avail@sungardas.com

 

About the author:

Dr Sandra Bell is Head of Business Continuity & ISDG Consulting (Europe) for Sungard Availability Services. She is a seasoned security and risk professional with over 25 years’ experience of the design and management of strategic, business-friendly security, continuity and risk solutions in the public and private sectors. Her experience ranges from the management of security and protection of data within the UK’s main business process outsourcer to the financial and government sectors to the protection of the largest part of the UK’s critical national infrastructure.

 

Your blueprint for a successful cloud transition

By |

You’ve listened to all the benefits of cloud computing, explored whether it would be right for your organisation and, finally, made the decision to make the move. But what happens next?

Sungard Availability Services has helped numerous companies of different sizes in various sectors successfully transition to a cloud environment. As with any infrastructure change, the secret to a trouble-free migration is careful planning.

Where should your cloud be based?

Should it be managed in-house, outsourced to a third party or a mix of the two?

What applications should be moved to the cloud first and which in a later phase?

We’ve produced a A blueprint for building your IT strategy infographic to follow that will answer all these questions and more.

Infographic_snippet

It covers the critical steps organisations need to go through, from establishing what you want to achieve and classifying your applications to choosing which cloud model, pricing structure and management model would best suit your organisation.

And, of course, you can always call on our experienced cloud consultants if you feel you need a little expert help to guide you through the transition. Just call 0800 143 413 or email avail@sungardas.com to find out more.

Tenet Group places a premium on guarantee of availability

By |

Leading financial adviser support group Tenet needed a cloud hosting provider it could rely on to support the mission-critical applications its advisers depend on daily. Having been let down by one provider in the past, its choice of technology partner to deliver a cloud solution was critical.  With availability of paramount importance, Tenet chose Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS) from Sungard Availability Services, our track record reassuring the company of our ability to deliver.

Matt Bottrill, Infrastructure & Security Manager for Tenet Group, explains, “Downtime would have a huge impact – not just on the service we provide our advisers, but on our ability to carry out our regulatory duties, as well as causing potential reputational damage. I can’t stress the importance of availability enough.”

As a driving force behind Tenet Group’s cloud strategy, Matt Bottrill was acutely aware his personal credibility was also at stake. He recalls, “We went through all the issues we’d experienced with our previous provider systematically and addressed them one by one, which gave me peace of mind. It was a critical meeting in gaining buy-in from the Tenet Group senior managers who were present.”

Sungard AS’s cloud consultants first gained a thorough understanding of Tenet as an organisation before designing a solution based on the best combination of its physical legacy environments and new cloud services to ensure seamless implementation and successful application delivery. ​

While ECS is hosted at Sungard AS’s London Technology Centre, Tenet has the added reassurance it will automatically failover to a geographically separate site in the event of an outage. This is particularly valuable as its ability to provide a full package of support to Independent Financial Advisors is a key differentiator for Tenet.

Tenet is enjoying many other benefits in addition to impressive uptime performance. “Apart from the resilience Sungard AS offers, there were all the obvious advantages that a stable, tried and tested cloud platform offers such as increased agility and that by outsourcing day-to-day operational tasks we have freed up resource to focus on things that add value to our business rather than just keeping the lights on.” As a successful, fast-growing company, scalability and flexibility were also important factors to Tenet, which has now deployed ECS to all its advisers.

Security and compliance were among the other vital considerations. “It is essential for us to know the security around the platform is watertight so personal information is secure, as compromised data could lead to fines and reputational damage. With Sungard AS that’s one less thing to worry about.”

Alongside Enterprise Cloud Services, Tenet Group contracts Workplace Recovery to give key individuals an alternative place to work in the event of its Leeds head office being inaccessible or unusable for any reason. “We’ve had a few different disaster recovery providers before and I was very impressed with Sungard AS’s Elland facility,” says Matt Bottrill. “Reliability and availability are a given with Sungard AS. Not just the cloud services but the business continuity provision too.”


Read the full case study here

If you would like to participate in our customer reference programme to share your story, visit our website for more information!

Rich pickings

By |

Financial services ‘big beasts’ must harness power of IT to scare off upstart challengers.

 

Sungard Availability Services’ research into corporate attitudes towards IT reveals the rise of new, digitally-native fintech organisations is challenging the established order of the financial services industry. Traditional institutions are now being forced to confront the power of technology or risk losing market share to these upstarts.

Investment in technologies that can help them meet rapidly changing market demands is crucial to the survival of the financial services industry’s old guard. This means the big beasts of the financial services sector are being forced to fight a battle on two fronts: maintaining their ageing legacy systems while, at the same time, implementing the latest digital technology to compete against cub challengers.

The survey, conducted by specialist IT research agency Vanson Bourne, questioned 700 IT decision-makers and 1,400 office workers from businesses in the UK, Ireland, France, Sweden and the US. It found that digital transformation is a priority for 92% of financial services businesses with a further 86% claiming it to be a critical factor in remaining competitive. The expected benefits are huge and include increased productivity (87%), improved customer satisfaction (51%) and opening new revenue streams (41%).

However, despite recognising the importance of digital transformation, there appears to be a disconnect when it comes to implementation. Nearly half (45%) of those working in financial services believe their current employer is behind competitors when it comes to adopting the latest digital tools and technologies.

Yet having access to the latest digital tools is considered crucial by 90% of financial services employees with well over a third (39%) admitting they would be embarrassed to work in a company without them. In fact, nearly a quarter (21%) of employees have actually left a job as the company did not enable digital working practices while a further 34% claim they would leave their current employer to join a more digitally progressive company.

With the sector already feeling the heat from digitally-native competition – such as the emergence of innovative UK start-ups Atom Bank and Mondo – this dissatisfaction with technology implementation could not only cause a competitive disadvantage but also lead to a staff retention crisis.

The banking industry has long struggled with the challenge of maintaining archaic mainframe systems, not always successfully. This year, Tesco Bank suffered huge reputational damage and loss of trust following a cyberattack in November that led to the bank refunding £2.5m to the 90,000 customers affected by the breach. The cause of the breach has not yet been revealed but the bank admits it has been ‘subject to criminal activity’[1].

All these factors are creating enormous pressure for the IT department. As well as the challenge of meeting staff demands, over half (57%) of IT decision-makers fear that the IT team cannot drive digital transformation at the speed their management team expects.

More than half (52%) of survey respondents consider integrating new applications into existing technologies is a missing skill, which is hindering their progress. This was a more acute problem for financial services organisations than any other industry surveyed in the study, which also included retail, manufacturing and the public sector. Each of these industries face their own unique challenges, which we will cover in a future edition of AVAIL.

Commenting on the findings, Keith Tilley, Executive Vice President, Global Sales & Customer Services Management, said, “The rise of new, innovative and digital-native fintech organisations is challenging the established order of the industry, with traditional institutions now being forced to confront the power of technology or risk losing market share to what they might regard as upstart competitors. Adopting the old maxim of “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, investment in the technologies that can better enable the financial services industry’s ‘old guard’ to meet rapidly changing market demands is going to be crucial to their survival.”

The full report on how organisations are handling the challenges of digital disruption is available for download here.

 

[1] http://www.techworld.com/security/uks-13-most-infamous-data-breaches-2016-3604586/

Which strategies will your IT peers put into play in 2017?

By |

Based on a global study of 1,350 senior IT decision makers and conducted by specialist technology market researcher Vanson Bourne, the Little Book of IT delivers an inside look at how IT leaders are taming the challenges they face in 2017.

This global report offers you a unique chance to join your peers in reshaping how the industry thinks about IT in 2017. Influence how other IT leaders make buying decisions, and by taking part in the research you’ll be eligible to receive a free copy of the final printed hardback book to keep.

Participation in the research project involves answering 35 questions covering the following topics:

  • Budget & its control
  • Staffing resource & development investment
  • Technology adoption
  • The application of apps
  • Biggest challenges
  • Biggest IT-driven opportunities
  • Seat at the table
  • 2017 IT wish list

Answers are strictly confidential and will only be reported collectively with no personally identifiable information used. The online survey, which should take no more than 15 minutes to complete, closes on 31st December 2016.

Head to LittleBookofIT.com today to be part of the 2017 edition.

2017, a year for IT leadership and innovation.

Industry high flyer appointed General Manager of Ireland

By |

You may have read in the press that Carmel Owens has been appointed as General Manager of Ireland to lead our business in the region, reporting directly to Jean-Philippe Sohier, SVP of European Sales. Carmel is responsible for the strategic direction of our sales channel in Ireland, ensuring we are best placed to deliver the technologies and services customers need to ensure their critical IT is aligned to business priorities.

A graduate of Dublin City University’s School of Computer Applications, Carmel Owens has nearly 20 years’ experience working in the business technology sector, spending time at a number of well-known technology companies including EMC, Version 1 and SQS. She held the role of Head of Public Sector at EMC for three years during which she worked with government bodies and public sector organisations spread across verticals including healthcare and transport. At Version 1, Carmel worked with the wider service provider market, exploring various new business models and infrastructure approaches.

Carmel Owens’ appointment comes at an exciting time as we continue to grow our presence in Ireland through sustained investment, job creation and the launch of our Channel Partner Program. This builds upon a year of activity which has seen Sungard AS expand our capabilities across technical operations, customer services, sales and marketing, while adding the security standard ISO 27001 to our extensive list of accreditations.

Commenting on the appointment, Jean-Philippe Sohier said, “It is with great pleasure that we welcome Carmel Owens to the business. Bringing significant expertise in both technology and business, Carmel’s in-depth knowledge of Ireland and the wider European markets will be an important asset to the region. I have no doubt that she will play a crucial role in developing and implementing the strategies that help deliver success for our customers.”

Carmel herself remarked, “I am enjoying leveraging my expertise in working with some of the largest public and private sector organisations in the region as well as my relationships with channel partners and other key vendors. As part of my role I will strive not only to serve our local customers but also those who operate internationally.”

Heading in the right direction

By |

Our thanks go to those customers who participated in our annual customer satisfaction telephone survey and to those that have participated in our online surveys to give us feedback on how we’re doing and where we can make improvements.

This year, an external market research firm interviewed 144 Sungard Availability Services customers in the UK and Ireland by phone and asked them to rate various aspects of our service. A further 250 customers responded to a web-based survey. This is a departure from previous years when a smaller number of customers were selected at random for a telephone survey. The survey respondents contracted our Managed Services (131), Recovery Services (111), Consulting (14), Software (5) and Cloud Services (30).

Here are the headline findings:

  • 86.5% are satisfied or very satisfied with our service overall.
  • 88.7% would definitely or probably continue to subscribe.
  • 82.5% would recommend Sungard Availability Services to a business associate.
  • Importantly, 87% say they have confidence in Sungard AS to recover their business.

While far from being complacent, we were pleased to note the customers surveyed were generally satisfied or very satisfied with the services they contract. These include Recovery Services (92.0%), Cloud Services (88.1%) and Managed Services (87.7%). Customers’ positive experiences of Recovery Services were reflected in a 94.6% rating for Alerts and Invocations. Service management was also given a thumbs up with an 88.7% satisfaction rating.

We were thrilled to score 100% in several areas, namely:

  • The initial sales contact
  • Consulting services
  • Site facilities (it’s good to see the investment we’ve made in better quality coffee is paying off!)

Areas flagged for attention are project management and, again, contracts and invoicing. The good news is we do recognise this problem and are investing in improvements. We are pleased to report that changes are on their way which will simplify invoices, something we expect will prove particularly welcome to customers with multiple or lengthy invoices. Watch this space for more news!

Our people attracted particular praise with comments such as, “The staff are brilliant, very professional, very knowledgeable” from one City bank and “Very responsive… A good working relationship” from another respondent being representative of the feedback.

79.5% of customers surveyed were very satisfied or satisfied with our Marketing and communications. Looking at AVAIL, for example, we were pleased to see most readers like its online format saying it is “Better, easier to access” and “Gives a choice of how you want to view it”. (Having said that, a reminder that those who prefer a hard copy or pdf versions can still pick up a print version at all our UK sites or submit their email address to receive a pdf copy). As for content, you are generally satisfied with the story mix, but your suggestions are always welcome!

Commenting on the feedback, Keith Tilley, EVP, global sales and customer services management, remarked, “Our annual customer satisfaction survey is a valuable exercise that helps us keep in touch with customers’ experience of our services and ensure they continue to meet business needs. As in previous years, the findings will be carefully considered and acted upon over the coming months. I’d like to add my personal thanks to all those customers who took the time to take part. Although the survey is conducted annually, your feedback is welcome all year round so if you weren’t among those selected to participate, feel free to email me any time at keith.tilley@sungardas.com”.

The serious message behind industry awards

By |

Since the last edition of AVAIL, our innovative Recovery Execution System (RES) has been judged Winner in the BCI Continuity and Resilience Innovation category of the BCI India Awards. The judges recognised the ground-breaking nature of RES, which offers end-to-end automation and ‘touch-free’ execution of all infrastructure and application recovery procedures across hybrid IT systems. We congratulate Kaushik Ray, our VP of Global Architecture and Customer Engineering, and all the members of the Sungard Availability Services team involved in its development.

But while we are delighted with this external endorsement, industry awards are, of course, about far more than bragging rights or a night out. They are tangible recognition that a company is on the right track – an independent endorsement that it is offering products or services that customers want and, in the judges’ opinion, doing it better than their peers. That’s why, as in previous years, Sungard Availability Services is proud to have been honoured with a number of accolades across North America, Europe and India during 2016 including:

  • Gold award in the Employer of the Year – Computer Services category of the ‘Stevies’.
  • Gold in the ‘IT Executive of the Year’ category of the ‘Stevie’® International Business Awards 2016 (‘the Stevies’) went to Kaushik Ray for his role in the development of RES, which the judges said has “completely transformed our industry and brought truly remarkable results.”
  • Silver award for ‘Best New Product or Service of the Year, Software – Cloud Storage & Backup Solution’ in the Stevies for our Cloud-based Recovery for AWS. Judges highlighted the solution’s innovation in storage replication, off-site storage and automated recovery of protected workloads, noting that they bring “tremendous value” to customers.
  • Best Continuity and Resilience Provider (Service/Product) 2016 in the respected BCI European Awards for our continued efforts to promote the resilience message through ‘Education, Good Practice and Events Publications’.
  • Finalist – BCI European Awards in two categories for Recovery as a Service.
  • Finalist – Recovery of the Year in the BCI India Awards in recognition of our ability to keep customers running throughout devastating floods in Chennai, India.
  • Finalist – Continuity and Resilience Provider (Service/Product) – BCI India Awards 2016.
  • Highly Commended in the hotly contested Most Effective Recovery of the Year category of the 2016 CIR Business Continuity Awards for our unwavering support for customers throughout India’s heaviest rainfall in over 100 years.
  • A Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for BCM Planning Software* worldwide for the second year in a row with AssuranceCM. We were positioned above the 14 other providers evaluated for our ‘ability to execute’ – providing BCMP software that meets customer requirements with a high level of service and customer support. Other criteria included completeness of vision based not just on the provider’s assessment of the current market but also its anticipation of expected market and technology changes.

 

*About the Magic Quadrant

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

 

Latest webinar tackles Hybrid IT

By |

If you’ve ever listened to one of our on-demand webinars you will know what a treasure trove of information they are. Now, we’re delighted to announce that a new title has been added to the series: ‘Dealing with the new normal: Hybrid IT’, recorded by Sungard Availability Services’ Chris Ducker, Senior Director: Global Proposition Strategy.

At first, the cloud was positioned as the answer to everything – with claims it could simplify, reduce costs and consolidate. However, it actually makes the IT environment more complex, often resulting in a mix of cloud and legacy systems, making Hybrid IT the new norm.

In this don’t-miss webinar Chris discusses, over 19 minutes, what hybrid IT means in today’s environment: its key elements, and the implications for the CIO, transitioning from IT manager to service orchestrator, infrastructure innovator and beyond. You can listen to it here.

We are recording more webinars all the time so check our Webinars page regularly for the latest availability and resilience topics!