London, UK – 9 November, 2010: SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of Information Availability and business continuity services, today launched Recover Anywhere, a service that can help extend full desktop recovery, including voice capability, to as high a percentage of the workforce as an organisation might require in the event of a business disruption. SunGard sponsored research revealed that 58% of UK chief financial officers currently expect only up to 40% of their staff to be able to continue to work from home in the event of a major interruption disruption to normal business.
By enabling their workforce to work effectively from wherever they are, organisations can improve their productivity during a disaster. According to the Federation of Small Businesses, it was estimated that UK businesses suffered £1.2 billion in lost productivity due to disruption brought about by 2010’s heavy snowfall. Furthermore, with the Work Wise Organisation, World Advertising Research Centre reporting that 20 per cent of the UK workforce is expected to be working from home by 2012, there is also the growing need for a flexible approach to recovery to address the new challenges organisations face with many of their staff operating remotely.
In contrast to traditional Virtual Private Network (VPN) access, which often only enables those employees with work laptops to access their corporate network, Recover Anywhere empowers any authorised employee to participate fully in everyday work following a disruption as long as they have access to a PC with an internet connection, and a telephone. A worker is provided with a URL and password to gain access to the recovered company network, hosted securely from within SunGard’s resilient recovery estate.
“In tough times, the need for organisations to remain productive and contactable, no matter what, is more crucial than ever,” said Keith Tilley, managing director UK and executive vice president Europe for SunGard Availability Services. “In our own experience as a provider of Workplace Recovery services to the UK, we have found that organisations have traditionally looked to recover between 20 – 40% of their employees in the event of a major business disruption. With Recover Anywhere, the number of staff recovered can be quickly and cost-effectively extended to other roles with the potential to help an organisation double the productive workforce. This will have a significant impact in terms of maintaining normal levels of productivity following an interruption.”
Without the need to purchase additional hardware, Recover Anywhere leverages existing IT assets, making it a cost-effective option for organisations looking to help ensure minimal loss of productivity following a disaster. The service integrates both physical and virtual workplace environments, allowing a core team of staff to operate from a traditional recovery centre, while the remaining business critical workers operate via secure access to an organisation’s existing IT and telephony - enabled by Recover Anywhere - wherever they may be at that time. In the case of an extended business disruption, lasting weeks or more, Recover Anywhere offers a sustainable solution, helping staff to work effectively from an alternate location for long periods of time, rather than asking them to make continuing daily trips to the nearest recovery centre, which could affect their work/life balance.
“The old business continuity mantra of placing everyone in one single location was dictated by the technology limitations of its time,” continued Tilley. “With more distributed working patterns, and the reality that physical recovery centres cannot be located near every disruption, it is imperative that organisations have the capability to support an increasingly dispersed workforce.”