Welcome to the Summer edition of AVAIL. We caught up with Sungard AS’ Senior Vice President of Consulting Mike Threlfall who explains how IT consulting can help organisations manage risk and master change. Among the many fascinating points he makes, perhaps the most powerful is his observation that as more IT services are connected between companies, organisations need to change the way they think about their IT, because it’s no longer their IT but part of a much wider world.
Indeed, this is one of the issues highlighted in our Little Book of IT, which sheds light on the many challenges and opportunities that face IT decision-makers today. If you haven’t registered to receive your own copy yet, this is a chance to see what your peers and competitors are doing across many aspects of IT and see how you compare.
As the recent global WannaCry attack forcefully demonstrated, the cybercrime market is also developing rapidly. Read our article on the steps you should be taking to give yourself a fighting chance against attack. And if you’d like to know more about ransomware, why not watch our ‘Top building blocks to combat cybercrime’ webinar?
The next big deadline on virtually all organisations’ calendars should be 25 May 2018 – the immovable date when the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be enforced. You’ve probably heard a lot about this already but research suggests that close to 40% of businesses have not started their preparations yet. If yours is among them, beware – the clock is ticking!
As testament to our recovery capabilities, Sungard AS has been positioned in the ‘Leaders’ quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for the third year in a row. This after being named as one of the ten most significant Disaster Recovery as a Service providers in the authoritative Forrester WaveTM report.
While on the subject of recovery, we don’t believe in making unsubstantiated claims so arranged independent validation of our test statistics by the Disaster Recovery Institute International. These confirmed that our recovery rate is indisputably 2.5 times better than the market average. Read the full story here.
Finally, 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 AS.UK.AvailEditor@sungardas.com.
Keith Tilley
Executive Vice President and Vice-Chair, Sungard Availability Services