SunGard Availability Services VP of product management Rob Walters discusses the company's new enterprise cloud services
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — While many managed service providers are partnering with third-party infrastructure companies to help introduce cloud solutions, some MSPs are taking on the daunting task of building out their own cloud solutions.
One such MSP is SunGard Availability Services (www.sungardas.com), which recently introduced its Enterprise Cloud Services to the North American market.
SunGard’s new Enterprise Cloud Services is powered by Vblock technology from VMware, Cisco and EMC.
The new service is an infrastructure as a service offering that offers both multi-tenant and dedicated private cloud solutions and options for intrusion detection.
One notable aspect of SunGard’s approach is that it is offering regular managed services and hosting to cloud customers, giving them the opportunity to move specific applications to the cloud while leaving the remaining apps as they are.
This will give those companies that are a slightly reluctant about moving to the cloud greater flexibility to do so at their own pace.
In an email conversation with the WHIR, Rob Walters, vice president of product management at SunGard Availability Services discussed the company’s new enterprise cloud services and how they differ from competing products in the market.
WHIR: Why did SunGard Availability Services decide to begin offering enterprise cloud services?
Rob Walters: In today’s climate, IT leaders are faced with constant pressures to increase operational efficiency, reduce costs for IT projects, and improve availability and performance of production application environments to support overall business goals. Our cloud solution was architected to help businesses address these challenges and realize immediate benefits that a true enterprise-grade platform such as ours can deliver – improved agility and scalability as well as resiliency. Here at SunGard, we have a long history and deep expertise in managing recovery and production of heterogeneous environments, including supporting hybrid infrastructures – hosted, dedicated and shared. Cloud is just another service-delivery platform, enabling us to provide availability to customers.
WHIR: How do you see your cloud offering complementing your existing managed hosting and colocation services?
RW: Our Enterprise Cloud Services are really an extension of our foundational managed services portfolio and provide customers with additional options for hosting production applications. This fully managed IaaS solution allows them to have immediate access to additional infrastructure and services when their growth demands it. Today IT environments are truly diverse and not every application or workload is a fit for the cloud. Our customers also benefit from dedicated hosting options as well as colocation solutions. By extending the service portfolio to include cloud, we can tailor a solution to fit even the most complex needs.
WHIR: Why did SunGard decide to provide fully managed services with its cloud platform?
RW: Over the years, more of our customers have come to rely on us to provide the necessary management services to ensure their applications are available. The expertise we have established in managing over 4,000 customer environments we have carried forward into the cloud platform. We provide a service-rich solution with integrated support backed by service level agreements that free up customers to focus attention on their applications and growing their business.
WHIR: Can you give more details about the infrastructure and hardware behind the new services?
RW: The fully managed IAAS cloud platform is built on a Vblock Infrastructure package. This reference architecture is a pretested, secure and resilient solution that combines best-in-class technology including Cisco’s Unified Computing System, Nexus 1000v and Multilayer Director Switches, EMC CLARiiON storage and the VMware vSphere platform. We choose to take advantage of this ready-made, secure stack, so we can focus on building security and management capability on top of it.
WHIR: How do these enterprise cloud services differ from the many competing services out there?
RW: We provide a fully managed cloud solution that integrates critical managed services, such as operating systems, databases, intrusion detection systems and intrusion prevention systems, and back these with strong service level agreements to ensure availability. When coupled with our integrated 24×7 support, which is backed by an ITIL framework and ISO 9001 processes, we deliver a resilient solution for production application needs that is truly enterprise grade. In addition, we are not just a cloud service provider. Our customers benefit from our broad portfolio of additional managed hosting, storage and recovery services for heterogeneous, physical and virtual environments. This is very important to the markets we serve given the diversity in any given IT environment.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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