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Top Five Reasons to Implement Business Continuity Management Software Outlined by SunGard Availability Services

Posted on: Monday, 6 April 2009, 08:30 CDT

Help Ensure a Solid Business Continuity Program through a Centralized, Automated Approach

WAYNE, Pa., April 6 /PRNewswire/ -- No one can control whether or not an organization will be affected by a natural disaster, hardware failure, power outage or other unplanned incident. However, companies can work to help ensure their organizations are prepared to respond to and recover from such events with minimal impact by creating and keeping current business continuity plans.

SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider in information availability management, has outlined the top five reasons to implement business continuity management (BCM) software as a foundation of an effective business continuity program:

Start with analyzing how a disaster will impact the business. A business impact analysis provides a detailed picture of an organization's financial and operational vulnerabilities, impacts and recovery strategies. BCM software supports multiple business impact analyses at any given time and allows organizations to perform historical tracking to compare past and current results and analyze trends. Additionally, BCM software helps establish recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives.

Generate and test actionable plans that address a full range of possible interruptions - big or small. BCM software creates business continuity plans with checklists of required activities and timing, clear explanations of assigned roles, definitions of needed resources and identification of dependencies. It is also able to recognize and relate technology and business relationships to the event and the recovery process. However, simply creating a business continuity plan is not enough. Organizations must also test their plans to identify and correct problems before an actual interruption occurs. BCM software allows companies to record the critical staff resources involved in a test, significant issues encountered during a test, as well as testing metrics that measure actual performance against goals.

Automate business continuity management processes while saving time and money. Organizations can waste hours and hours of data entry work to keep their business continuity plans updated when utilizing basic tools such as word processing documents, only to have to revise them again in the near future. BCM software helps organizations to make changes once, and then it automatically applies those changes to the entire plan - significantly reducing time and administrative costs.

Remove guesswork from compliance and security regulations. BCM software supports compliance by tracking relevant information about an organization's availability program and providing a central source of information. This facilitates faster, more efficient reporting to governing bodies within and outside an organization. Additionally, by utilizing BCM software, companies are better able to protect confidential plan information and filter it to only its intended audiences. When selecting a BCM solution, organizations should choose software designed with security architecture that complies with major regulations such as HIPAA and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Accommodate change and growth over time. BCM software is a tool that is built to accommodate change and address the unique demands of information availability. It can be scaled appropriately to fit companies of any size - regardless of the maturity of their business continuity program. For example, a small organization could start with an on-demand solution with little or no customization and have it grow with their needs. A large enterprise, on the other hand, can take advantage of customized capabilities and have many daily or weekly functions performed automatically.

According to the report "Q&A for Business Continuity Management: Best Practices for Plan Management" by Gartner, "Without a centralized and automated approach, managing business continuity management plans is a difficult task, one that puts the recovery of the enterprise at risk because of the outdated use of information for response-and-recovery efforts."*

"Regardless of technologies used for business continuity and disaster recovery, businesses rely on BCM software to develop a holistic planning strategy that includes their people and partners," said Tracey Forbes, vice president, product development at SunGard Availability Services. "As part of our portfolio of information availability services, SunGard Availability Services' BCM software offerings help customers to simplify processes and manage the entire lifecycle of their continuity program in one central location."

For information about SunGard Availability Services' upcoming International User Group Conference for business continuity management professionals, please visit http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Summary.aspx?e=c560fb96-3225-446a-9f5b-9e68f7a713e7 or contact Kathleen Aris at kathleen.aris@sungard.com.

Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SUGC.

About SunGard Availability Services

SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software to more than 10,000 customers in North America and Europe. With four million square feet of datacenter and operations space, SunGard assists IT organizations across virtually all industry and government sectors prepare for and recover from emergencies by helping them minimize their computer downtime and optimize their uptime. Through direct sales and channel partners, we help organizations ensure their people and customers have uninterrupted access to the information systems they need in order to do business. To learn more, visit www.availability.sungard.com or call 1-800-468-7483.

About SunGard

SunGard is one of the world's leading software and IT services companies. SunGard serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries, including the world's 25 largest financial services companies.

SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software.

With annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 472 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and services company on the Forbes list of private businesses. Based on information compiled by Datamonitor**, SunGard is the third largest provider of business applications software after Oracle and SAP. Continuity, Insurance & Risk has recognized SunGard as service provider of the year an unprecedented five times. For more information, please visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.

* Gartner, Inc. "Q&A for Business Continuity Management: Best Practices for Plan Management" by Roberta J. Witty and Kristen Noakes-Fry, Nov. 3, 2008

**January 2009 Technology Vendors Financial Database Tracker http://www.datamonitor.com

Trademark Information: SunGard and the SunGard logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

SOURCE SunGard Availability Services

Source: PR Newswire

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