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Top Five Reasons to Utilize Managed IT Services in a Down Economy Outlined by SunGard Availability Services

Posted on: Tuesday, 14 April 2009, 08:30 CDT

Managed IT Services Deliver Benefits in an Era of "Doing More with Less"

WAYNE, Pa., April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- In today's difficult economic environment, organizations are turning to managed IT services to help them achieve lower and more predictable IT support costs, while also improving IT resiliency and operational efficiencies. Organizations are realizing the advantages of leveraging the investments of managed IT services providers rather than building and managing their own IT infrastructures.

SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of information availability, has outlined the top five reasons to use a managed IT services provider in today's down economy:

Gain support for mixed IT environments and leverage investments in technology and tools. Most data centers consist of both legacy and newer technologies and it often becomes difficult for organizations to manage and maintain these mixed IT environments internally. Managed IT services providers take away the burden by providing specialized services to monitor, maintain and optimize every aspect of the IT environment -- from Microsoft Windows servers to legacy systems to virtualized environments. Additionally, by leveraging a managed IT services provider's IT infrastructure, organizations can gain access to advanced tools and technologies helping them to have higher levels of visibility into the growth and performance of their applications.

It's too expensive to build and maintain a data center on your own. For many organizations, building or upgrading their own data centers is becoming increasingly difficult to justify. In an era of budget cuts and curbed IT spending, many organizations are finding managed IT services as an attractive alternative. By leveraging a managed IT services provider, organizations have access to time-tested processes, skills and infrastructure, along with higher levels of security and reliability, at a lower cost. This also allows organizations to better manage internal resources.

IT services available as you need them, when you need them. Organizations can use a third party to manage their entire IT environment or just a small portion. When selecting a service provider, it is important to identify providers that offer scalable capabilities available on demand such as hosting services, application services, e-mail and collaboration services, network services, managed security services, storage services and replication services. This helps organizations to purchase what they need, when they need it and to expand as they grow.

Focus on your business priorities and operational excellence, not IT requirements. The core competency of a managed IT services provider is high availability and uninterrupted access to mission-critical data and systems. Organizations do not need to devote scarce internal time and resources to deal with supporting databases or operating systems, responding to hardware crashes, power outages or other day-to-day headaches. Managed services providers invest significant resources into building a cost-effective operational support model that organizations can leverage so that they can stay close to what really matters -- their customers, productivity and profitability. Using a managed IT services provider also allows organizations to accelerate their time to market and help improve overall availability, all within a predictable cost model.

Regulatory requirements do not decrease, even when IT budgets do. Security, e-discovery and compliance requirements mandate data must still be retained, managed and accessible, even with a cap on spending. SAS 70 Type II audited providers have internally audited procedures in place and offer the latest security technologies, as well as 24/7 support and expertise. This helps organizations stay compliant while protecting systems, applications and data from the ever-growing number of threats that come from outside and within. Today's leading managed services providers are augmenting their compliance support to extend beyond SAS 70 Type II audits in order to truly meet customer requirements (such as PCI-DSS)

"Given limited prospects for growth and the high cost of capital, many businesses will turn to managed services to limit capital investments while increasing the flexibility of IT infrastructure," said Henry Dewing, principal analyst, Forrester Research, (Market Overview: The Broad Opportunities in Managed Services, Forrester Research, Inc., November 7, 2008).

"Managing every aspect of your organization's IT infrastructure presents a long list of challenges and may get in the way of running your business," said Rahul Bakshi, vice president, managed services strategy and solution design, at SunGard Availability Services. "Leveraging a managed services provider helps organizations achieve lower data center costs and improve system and application uptime."

"SunGard Availability Services delivers a full range of managed services that can be tailored to meet each organization's individual requirements. Our entire offering is backed by our robust IT infrastructure, experienced professionals and more than 30 years of collective experience," said Mr. Bakshi.

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.

*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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