SunGard Offers Data-Center Benchmarking Tools

SunGard Availability Services on Tuesday rolled out benchmarking and total-cost-of-ownership assessment tools designed to help businesses estimate data-center operation costs, everything from hosting a new application to an entire data center move.

The Microsoft Excel-based applications were developed in collaboration with Nucleus Research, an IT consulting firm. The benchmarking tool provides companies with comparative cost data from other companies in their industry that Nucleus gathered through surveys. The total-cost-of-ownership tool lets companies compare the costs of building an internal back-up facility against contracting with an outsourcer for such services.

The tools aren't biased toward SunGard, but are intended to provide an objective means of assessing data-center management options, says Andrea Roman, SunGard Availability's marketing director. Possible options include outsourcing an entire data center, hosting applications through a third-party company, or a blended model where companies manage and control applications and data while using the data-center facilities of a third-party service provider.

SunGard Availability Services is part of SunGard Data Systems Inc., the $3-billion company that a group of private investors is buying for $11.3 billion.