Meet us on Twitter, next Tuesday, April 10th at 11am PT/ 2pm ET for #CloudTalk hosted by VMware vCloud, to hear our perspective on how we see big data evolving in the cloud this year.
Also, get insight into our new fully managed enterprise-grade, Apache™ Hadoop™-based data analytics platform, now in technical preview, announced April 4th. The SunGard Unified Analytics ServicesSM (UAS) will address the growing business requirement organizations face to extract more business intelligence and value from their massive volumes of structured, semi-structured and unstructured resources that continue to grow exponentially. The service will allow organizations to eliminate costs needed to purchase and manage physical infrastructure for their Big Data workloads.
Tweet us @SunGardAS prior to the #cloudtalk with any questions or topics you’d like us to discuss.
Here’s how to participate in #cloudtalk:
Follow the #cloudtalk hashtag (via TweetChat, TweetGrid, TweetDeck or another Twitter client) and watch the real-time stream.
At 11am PT/ 2pm ET @vCloud will pose a few questions using the #cloudtalk hashtag to get the conversation rolling.
Tag your tweets with the #cloudtalk hashtag. @reply other participants and react to their questions, comments, thoughts via #cloudtalk. Engage!
#cloudtalk should last about an hour.
(Get more details on the next #cloudtalk at VMware’s vCloud blog.)
We have a jam-packed schedule at DRJ Spring World 2012 (#drjspring) in Orlando next week, but unfortunately that doesn’t include a ride on Space Mountain or a show at SeaWorld. Instead, we’ll be located in booth 415-419 visiting with conference attendees sharing our expertise on why test management is crucial to your overall business continuity management strategy and exploring the three pillars of operational resilience and how to achieve it. SunGard is a silver sponsor of DRJ Spring World. Come by and visit us!
We also have several presentations planned this year in addition to the kick-off of our Mobile Recovery Unit Multi-City Tour. Stop by any of the presentations for a chance to win an iPad! Details below.
This is Not a Test: A How-to Guide for Effective Plan Testing in the Real-World Time: Monday; 12:15 – 1:15 PM and 5:30 – 6:30 PM, Tuesday; 12:15 – 1:15 PM Location: Coronado A
Kelley Ashton, senior product specialist/trainer and Tracey Forbes, vice president software business development, will share insight into SunGard’s Test Management solution for streamlining and improving plan testing. You’ll learn how this powerful new dedicated BC/DR test management platform can track and validate BC/DR plan tests quickly and easily.
Reality Check: Experiences in Using Cloud-Based Recovery to Facilitate Your Disaster Planning in the Real-World Time: Monday and Tuesday;12:15 – 1:15 PM Location: Coronado B
Vasu Subbiah, senior director product management, will explore several recent case studies on declaration events experienced by our customers in 2011. Whether its business continuity or cloud recovery, IT departments are asked to enhance data capabilities while reducing cost. SunGard Availability Services is here to help.
Mobile Recovery Unit Tours Time: Tuesday;10:00 AM – 3:00 PM Location: Parking Lot A, outside the Veracruz Exhibit Hall
Stop by the mobile recovery unit for a tour and special presentation to learn how Mobile Recovery Services can pull a workgroup facility right up to your door or, anywhere you need it. In addition, weather forecast service provider, Impact Weather, will be providing a 2012 Hurricane Forecast at 10am and 2pm in the mobile unit. Get mobile recovery unit tour details!
Operational Resilience – What is it, and How Can You Achieve it? Time: Tuesday;10:45 AM General Session 6 Location: General Session Location
Business Continuity professionals are asked to make the organization ‘resilient’ – but what does that mean? How do you measure it? And how do you create a program that spans the enterprise without being perceived as the ‘DR’ team? This presentation explores the three pillars of operational resilience defined as business continuity management, information security, and IT operations – and offers a powerful approach for focusing on operational risk exposures, identifying measurable improvement, and driving operational resilience, so that leaders can have greater certainty, lower risk, and better-managed costs. Presented by Christopher Burgher CISSP, PMP, CISA, principal SunGard Consulting Services.
Better recovery planning begins with essential DR planning resources. A strong recovery program requires understanding how business needs determine recovery objectives. Download your free Business Continuity Toolkit now for the resources you need to get started.
Be sure to follow SunGard Availability Services during the conference for live updates –Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
In just few days, we’ll be headed to DRJ Spring World 2012 (#drjspring) – the premier event for decision makers in every aspect of business continuity and disaster recovery. Its’ 46th conference will offer industry insights and trends, best practices and real-world examples through its’ 45 sessions, 12 workshops and 9 keynotes. SunGard Availability Services is a silver sponsor of this conference and we’ll be located in booth 415-419.
We have an exciting agenda planned for the conference this year; in particular we’ll be kicking off a multi-city tour of our state-of-the-art Mobile Recovery Unit! Severe weather in early 2012 has elevated the importance of disaster planning for many organizations in the Southeast region of the United States. To help minimize the impact of hurricanes, floods, power outages and tornadoes on your business operations, we’ll be going on the road with our Mobile Recovery Unit to bring you the latest best practices for strengthening your Disaster Preparedness Plan.
Stop by the mobile recovery unit on Tuesday, March 27 for a tour and special presentation to learn how Mobile Recovery Services can pull a workgroup facility right up to your door or, anywhere you need it. Our modern fleet includes up to 350 work seats per unit, equipped with state-of-the-art HP dual-core workstations, Avaya VoIP telephone systems, and Internet connectivity and printer access. Mobile datacenters come provisioned with the custom equipment you require to recover your datacenter. In addition, weather forecast service provider, Impact Weather, will be providing a 2012 Hurricane Forecast at 10am and 2pm in the mobile unit.
The mobile recovery unit will be located at Disney Coronado Springs Resort, Parking Lot A outside the Veracruz Exhibit Hall.
Mobile Recovery Unit Presentations Disaster Event Trends 2011-2012 , 10:00 – 10:30 AM and 3:00 – 3:30 PM
Be sure to follow SunGard Availability Services during the conference for live updates –Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Essential DR Planning Resources
Check out this new Business Continuity Toolkit containing a suite of materials to help you develop solid plans for any disaster or interruption. Get powerful insights you can use today to build a more resilient organization.
The @SunGardAS team had a jam-packed schedule and exciting time at Cloud Connect Santa Clara last week! In case you missed the conference, here are some highlights from the conference and show floor.
Cloud Connect was an especially exciting week for SunGard as we announced our partnership with Amazon Web Services to deliver highly available cloud computing offerings. The first phase of the relationship will provide SunGard and AWS customers bi-directional disaster recovery services between the companies’ clouds, without transporting data over the public internet. Get AWS announcement details.
Holding down the fort at booth 414, our team met with show attendees to discuss today’s hottest cloud trends – including compliance, private cloud options, organizational readiness, disaster recovery in the cloud and of course cloud security.
Rich Miller, editor of Data Center Knowledge, stopped by our booth at to give us his take on the conference, trends he was hearing and some thoughts on the direction of cloud computing as it relates to data centers. Watch video here.
During the conference, a few of our cloud experts had the opportunity to present on a few topics – both of which were well attended and well received. Check out this clip of David Ayers, senior product manager of Cloud Services, previewing his presentation entitled “Taking a Private Path to the Cloud”.
Get copies of both SunGard Cloud Connect presentations on SlideShare:
We weren’t “all business” at the conference; we actually had a little fun too! Booth visitors were offered scratch-off tickets for a chance to win a MacBook® Air, Apple® iPad® 2 or a $5 Starbucks® gift card.
Frank Owen, IT operations manager and owner of TechVirtuoso blog, won an iPad2 while Ron Hayes of Avaya Government Solutions scored the grand prize – a MacBook® Air! Unfortunately we missed catching the big win on camera, but don’t worry this reenactment we filmed captures all the excitement! Watch video here.
Thanks to those who attended the SunGard presentations and also stopped by our booth. For additional conference updates, photos and resources follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Rich Miller, editor of Data Center Knowledge, stopped by our booth at Cloud Connect last week to give us his take on the conference, trends he was hearing and some thoughts on the direction of cloud computing as it relates to data centers. Watch video below:
Following the conference and the announcement of our partnership with Amazon Web Services, Data Center Knowledge published the following article, “SunGard: Cloud Concepts Are ‘In Our DNA’”, that discusses our deep expertise in enterprise disaster recovery and how we plan to leverage that experience in our cloud computing approach.
“Our business model is to provide shared infrastructure that is available on demand across a geographic footprint,” said Indu Kodukula, the chief technology officer for SunGard Availability. “So we know a little bit about this. We have an appreciation for what it takes to maintain large multi-tenant environments. It’s in our DNA.” Read the full article here
We’re escaping the cold, wintery weather at our headquarters in Philadelphia and heading to Silicon Valley for Cloud Connect Santa Clara (#ccevent) February 14-15, 2012. Cloud Connect brings together the entire cloud eco-system to better understand the transformations cloud is bringing to the Enterprise.
As a Platinum sponsor, we’ll be setting up shop at booth #414 where SunGard representatives will be available to discuss our cloud offerings, including our Enterprise Cloud Services and cloud-recovery services. Stop by our booth during the expo for a scratch off ticket* where you could win an Apple® MacBook® Air, Apple® iPad® 2 or a $5 Starbucks® gift card. Every card is a winner, so be sure to stop by. We’ll also be attending several sessions throughout the duration of the conference where we’ll be live tweeting, posting to our Facebook wall and shooting video in our booth. Follow us for the play-by-play!
Prior to the conference, join us for Happy Hour at Birk’s Restaurant from 5:30 – 7:00 pm on Monday, February 13th. REGISTER HERE if you plan to attend Happy Hour. Registration is required. (Get Directions to Birk’s Restaurant from the Convention Center).
Also on the schedule this year, SunGard Availability Services will be delivering two presentations during the conference. The first session will examine the increasing need for private cloud solutions and things to consider when evaluating a private cloud solution. Session details below:
Taking a Private Path to the Cloud Date: Tuesday, February 14, 2012, 1:15 PM-2:15 PM Presenter: David Ayers, senior product manager of Cloud services at SunGard Availability Services Location: Grand Ballroom H Description: Enterprises are actively exploring cloud solutions to help drive down overall IT costs and increase operational efficiency, all while minimizing risks and reducing complexity. However, the vendor landscape is filled with public solutions not always suited to Enterprise needs for security, compliance, service levels and high availability. This session will discuss the growing need for private cloud and the different aspects to consider when evaluating private cloud solutions.
The second presentation, slated for Wednesday, will review the top 5 considerations for cloud-based recovery.
Recovering Applications to Cloud: Top 5 Considerations for Raising Service Levels with Tiered Recovery Services Date: Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 12:05 PM-12:25 PM Presenter: Ram Shanmugam, senior director of product management at SunGard Availability Services Location: Cloud Solutions Theater Description: In this session, SunGard will offer an inside perspective on the top 5 considerations for cloud-based recovery, which are: analyzing applications by business value, selecting modern data movement into the cloud, automating recovery steps, using enterprise-class cloud platforms, and scoping network requirements. SunGard will also provide an overview of its Recover2Clouds services suite [Check out this VIDEO], which packages modern data movement for tiered recovery benefits.
Stop back here for updates during and after the conference, follow us on Twitter, and don’t forget to stop by booth #414 for your chance to win an Apple® MacBook® Air, Apple® iPad® 2 or $5 Starbucks gift card. See you in Santa Clara!
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*Entry Card must be scratched-off in front of SunGard representative at Booth #414 during the Expo hours of Cloud Connect 2012 to be valid.
Contest Terms and Conditions One card per person. Contest is limited to residents of the United States and the District of Columbia. No purchase is necessary to enter. SunGard employees are not eligible to win. Chances of winning Apple MacBook Air 1:500, Apple IPad 2 2:500, Starbucks Gift Card 497:500.
Somehow, a perception exists that a cloud provides a certain level of redundancy by default. However, make no mistake. Redundancy is not inherent.
Admittedly, individual hardware and software components have some redundancy built in. However, those capabilities do not eliminate the need for a redundant cloud any more than safe cars eliminate the need for speed limits, traffic lights, divided highways and the rules-of-the-road.
For many cloud providers, especially consumer cloud providers, the only redundancy offered is to make physical copies of the data—and many customers do not use even that minimal level of recovery. These clouds were not built with redundancy in mind. They lack the automation, monitoring and procedures to provide clients with an environment that can anticipate, react and recover from component failures. Such clouds are cost effective only if your business, employees and/or customers can tolerate the occasional complete loss of service.
Redundant Redundancy
The hallmark of an enterprise clouds is the redundancy it offers. Redundancy exists throughout between the infrastructure layers to ensure high-availability. For example, a failover process detects application hangs and interruptions so corrective action takes place quicker. Monitoring tools ensure no single points of failure develops, and specially-built automation handles error conditions when a problem does occurs, obviating the need for human intervention. This type of automation is particularly important because human interaction comes only after some level of damage is evident.
Built-in Redundancy
It is cloud vendor’s responsibility to design and build redundancy into the cloud, and the expertise, staff, time and investment it requires is substantial. Patches and piecemeal solutions added over time do not render the same strong results as redundancy baked-in from the beginning.
Is recovery of stored data enough redundancy for your applications?
SunGard Managed Recovery Program (MRP) service continues to gain momentum. Last week, another customer came through the MRP on-boarding test process. Their comments and findings provide a “before” and “after” picture of what organizations working with this exciting new service from SunGard can expect:
The organization reported “significant” improvements with “tremendous value” while also “reducing the number of people we must send in the event of a disaster”.
A cross-discipline approach now in place at SunGard was identified as speeding problem resolution during test.
Improved communication between the SunGard test team and the customer’s DR team was noted, including the practice of hosting a conference call that kept all members of the team in constant communication through the test exercise.
SunGard’s new role of Service Deliver Manager (SDM) was cited as being key in providing a single point of communication, resulting in the “smoothest test ever” from a communications and coordination standpoint.
Upcoming participation by SunGard in the organization’s weekly change control meetings is anticipated to be a “very positive” measure towards enabling SunGard to lead recovery for the organization. They note this as being critical because most of their technical team is located far from the SunGard Philadelphia recovery site location.
The organization’s goal is to eliminate all requirements for their team to come on site, either during test or recovery.
The experience reported by this organization mirrors similar experiences of other organizations coming through the SunGard MRP test process. Examples of these experiences were recently shared at the Gartner Data Center Conference during a panel discussion led by Kerwin Myers, Sr Director of Product Management for MRP service at SunGard. Also participating on the panel discussion, were two senior Service Delivery Managers (SDMs).
If you have questions about MRP service and how it can solve disaster recovery challenges for your DR team, submit your comments and questions. The team at SunGard will get back to you promptly.
Recently, Indu Kodukula, SunGard EVP and CTO, was interviewed by Smart Business Philadelphia. Here are a few of his remarks. – CM
The #1 reason companies want to use the cloud for their applications is to align their spending with business value. Companies don’t know up-front what business return they would receive from a capital investment in enterprise IT. Without the cloud, they have to make the investment anyway and hope it is profitable.
Using the cloud makes a fundamental difference, because you only pay for the compute resources you use or the data you store. You don’t have hardware to buy or install and, in a managed environment, you don’t need internal resources to manage your IT. The service provider takes responsibility for maintaining the software, servers and applications.
As a result, companies utilizing the cloud for enterprise IT can make investments that are automatically in line with the business value. Then, they can invest more capital into infrastructure and resources as the business becomes more successful.
Companies typically walk through several points when making the decision to use the cloud. First, the moment something moves outside your firewall, you don’t own it anymore. So you have to decide what to keep in-house and what to move to the cloud. Second, you must consider performance and availability of data in the cloud. In the cloud, multisite availability is used for applications that (1) can tolerate only about four hours of downtime a year, (2) need geographic redundancy, or (3) are responsible for keeping the business up and running
How can businesses get started?
The first step toward moving applications to the cloud is to do a virtualization assessment. Then, determine which applications to virtualize. Next, take the virtualized applications and decide what to keep in house and what to move outside your firewall.
Look for a cloud service provider that will guide you through the process, helping you understand and decide which applications should stay in house—either because they are not ready to be virtualized or they are too tied into business—and which applications can be moved safely. The goal is to create a roadmap for moving applications to the cloud data center.
Which applications are good fits for the cloud?
If you have an application that supports your business and has such strong growth that it will need 10 times more resources next year than it does today, the elasticity the cloud offers is a great option. If the application also uses modern technology, which is easier to virtualize, that combination makes it compelling to move that application to cloud. Obviously, the business argument for moving older technology, like ERP, to the cloud is much less strong.
Is your company taking steps to determine how it can benefit from the cost savings of an enterprise cloud?
Business continuity focuses on the resiliency, restoration, disaster recovery and security needed to keep your system operating, performing, secure and, if an incident should occur, recoverable. Many cloud vendors have little experience with business continuity, preferring instead to offer consumer cloud services to clients that provide their own back-up procedures, intrusion protection, vulnerability alerts, firewalls, software upgrades and disaster recovery planning/testing.
Resiliency is the key
Without strong resiliency, redundancy and failover capabilities at each layer of the cloud stack, the failure of one component can cause the failure, in short order, of many subsequent processes. Some vendors have experienced such “cascading failures.” To be truly resilient, each component in the cloud must have failover logic and automation.
Enterprise Clouds are build for overall resiliency. That means they have not only failover capabilities and integrated, multi-site, storage locations but also multiple points “baked-in” where the system can failover in and between layers automatically. If a component fails, it needs to failover without human interaction, so the workload moves automatically to alternative hardware to maintain availability.
Ask the Tough Questions
If low-latency, high-performance, robust security and vigilant management are key requirements for your applications, it pays to drill your potential cloud provider about their procedures and automation related to resilience, redundancy, security, governance and data recovery. Ask for their Service Level Agreement early in your conversations, since it spells out the level of responsibility the provider expects to provide.
Does your current data center have automatic failover?
Meet us on Twitter, next Tuesday, April 10th at 11am PT/ 2pm ET for #CloudTalk hosted by VMware vCloud, to hear our perspective on how we see big data evolving in the cloud this year.
The @SunGardAS team had a jam-packed schedule and exciting time at 
Holding down the fort at booth 414, our team met with show attendees to discuss today’s hottest cloud trends – including 
We weren’t “all business” at the conference; we actually had a little fun too! Booth visitors were offered scratch-off tickets for a chance to win a MacBook® Air, Apple® iPad® 2 or a $5 Starbucks® gift card.