Independent validation of 87% recovery success rate.
As a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and Forrester WavesTM for Disaster Recovery as a Service, you would expect Sungard Availability Services to know a thing or two about getting companies back in business again after an interruption. And you would be right. But after almost 40 years of providing technology and workplace recovery services to customers worldwide, we decided to engage the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII) to provide independent scrutiny of our recovery success rates and set a benchmark for the rest of the industry to aspire to.
DRII evaluated Sungard AS’ Managed Recovery Program’s (MRP) statistical analysis of US-based customers who successfully tested their business continuity/disaster recovery plans under Managed Recovery contracts with Sungard AS between 1 January and 31 December 2016.
DRII’s approach and methodology are regimented and beyond reproach to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the findings. Accordingly, the assessment process conducted was extensive, both in depth and breadth. DRII had access to Sungard AS documentation, multiple customers who agreed to be interviewed directly by DRII and key personnel who performed the actual testing.
Taking the most conservative approach possible, results were measured binarily – either the full result was successfully attained or the results were scored as a total fail. ‘Success’ was defined as meeting all of the customer’s testing objectives, including meeting or bettering the Recovery Time Objective (RTO). By eliminating partial successes and failures, the most objective and accurate means of scoring was used.
At the end of the thorough validation process, DRII was able to verify that Sungard AS achieved an 87% customer testing success rate (excluding those whose tests failed solely due to customer issues) and a 78% testing success rate overall. This is two-and-a-half times better than the industry average, which according to the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council, is just 35%[1].
Recovery of complex IT is difficult: This would appear to be backed up by Gartner’s findings in its 2016 ‘Gartner Predicts’ report involving a survey of 854 organisations. Only 13 were able to achieve a reasonable level of recovery success while the vast majority of respondents were unable to meet their recovery objectives and ran into difficulties[2].
Daren Howell, Marketing Manager, who led the project noted that Al Berman, CEO of the DRII, commented that we had “scored ourselves conservatively, demonstrating great integrity.”
Keith Tilley, EVP and vice chair Sungard AS, paid tribute to Kaushik Ray and his recovery team who are delivering recovery service performance that is way above any of the industry benchmarks that we can find. Whether Forrester Waves or Gartner Magic Quadrants, you will find Sungard AS in a leadership position.
Sungard AS recognises that this assessment and others are only possible with the support of our customers who give up their time to complete research surveys and participate in interviews. This is very much appreciated.
[1] Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council Benchmark Report 2014
[2] https://www.gartner.com/doc/3514518/predicts–business-continuity-management