MSP Cloud

SunGard Offers Cloud Backup Through Amazon's Direct Connect

By Erin Harrison
Executive Editor, Strategic Initiatives

Managed service provider SunGard Availability Services said it will provide cloud backup services through Amazon’s Direct Connect, which will be available to both Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) and SunGard cloud customers.

SunGard officials said the relationship with Amazon will ultimately allow the company to bring its enterprise customers a more complete range of cloud-based services.

“This is a complementary relationship that will have wide-reaching benefits for both organizations and our customers,” Indu Kodukula, chief technology officer, SunGard Availability Services, said in a company statement.

Under the first phase of the relationship, SunGard will leverage AWS Direct Connect, providing “LAN-like” connectivity from AWS’ East Coast data centers to the SunGard Enterprise Cloud. The company said this arrangement will allow SunGard to provide customers with so-called bi-directional disaster recovery services between SunGard and AWS, without having to transport data over the public internet.

Kodukula also praised Amazon Web Services for its capabilities as a cloud provider.

“Amazon Web Services is a leading global cloud provider. SunGard is a leader in reliability, with over a decade of managed service informed by three decades of being the world’s leading DR provider. Working with Amazon Web Services means bringing those two worlds together and providing customers of both organizations a more comprehensive range of cloud-based services,” he said.

The new cloud storage service, which is in “technical preview availability,” will allow customers to utilize the AWS Storage Gateway (News - Alert), a software appliance with cloud-based storage using Amazon’s S3 – providing customers an added layer of data protection by giving them the ability to asynchronously write customer data bi-directionally between the SunGard Enterprise Cloud and AWS’s storage infrastructure. The service will be architected by SunGard and will utilize both SunGard and AWS technologies, company officials said.

Additionally, SunGard said it will “continue to address the top barriers to entry of cloud computing, including application migration, data security, privacy and application availability.”

Earlier this month, SunGard was given a 2011 Excellence in Cloud Computing Award from TMC's (News - Alert) Cloud Computing magazine for its enterprise cloud services. SunGard focuses on delivering solutions in the areas of high availability and hybrid workloads, cloud consulting and recovery/continuity services.