A brand-new information-availability center is slated to open soon. It's within driving distance from the megacenter, which went live in 2001 and has plenty of room for growth. But the new center, with 172,000 square feet, will focus primarily on information availability. SunGard experts will operate and manage customer equipment for the cost of two full-time people, performing tasks such as database and storage administration. One service SunGard provides along with Dell lets small and midsize business customers access a pre-configured server in times of trouble for $300 per year.
In case of a major disaster that affects many customers, SunGard relies on its crisis-management center near company headquarters outside Philadelphia. A voice-recognition system tracks customer calls as they come in. It operates on a first-come, first-served basis, but nobody is turned away: SunGard can bring all 35 of its megacenters to work as one if needed. Whether it's a disaster or everyday nonstop availability, SunGard offers customers the option to keep information always on for less money and pain than they could do on their own.
"The biggest cost to customers is the network pipe," Guddemi says. "Instead, they can tie into our network from anyplace in the country."
A former Comdisco Inc. customer was so happy with SunGard after the two disaster-recovery companies merged that it extended its contract for three more years. "Two and a half years ago, we evaluated our recovery needs and decided on four hours of tolerance," says Mitchell Hodus, VP of technology operations at Evergreen Investments. "But we were lucky to recover information in 30 hours from the tapes we used at the time." Evergreen shifted gears dramatically and began mirroring its infrastructure in a SunGard facility. SunGard provides the generators, telephony, and extra space for desktops that Hodus doesn't want to have to deal with in case of a disaster. SunGard Data Systems Inc., SunGard Availability's parent company and a provider of managed services to the financial-services industry, isn't immune to the economic doldrums. Though revenue in the third quarter ended Sept. 30 grew 18% to $92 million, and net income was up by about 15%, the vendor admitted it suffered from flat IT spending and only grew as a result of acquisitions.
SunGard Data Systems claims 20,000 customers worldwide, many from its Comdisco acquisition, and counts 47 out of the world's 50 largest financial-services companies as customers. The company realizes it must ride with customers that want to diminish investments in pure backup facilities and implement processes around business continuity. SunGard Data Systems processes 3 million trades daily on its systems and maintains 75 data centers, 50 mobile data centers, and more than 15,000 end-user recovery positions in Europe and North America.
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