Sungard Availability Services has debuted the Act with Assurance mobile app, building on its existing Assurance Business Continuity Software to help businesses more efficiently manage and recover from an incident.
The app coordinates with the Assurance Software platform to provide management for business continuity. It delivers individualized playbooks to recovery team members for each test exercise or actual event, right to their mobile devices.
“The most important part of managing an incident is communication. It’s also the biggest challenge recovery teams face,” said Ted Marquardt, senior product manager at Sungard AS. “Unfortunately, when disaster strikes, it is not uncommon for incident responders to find themselves frustrated by plans in static, outdated PDFs or binders, or to be interrupted by conference calls with requests for updates. These barriers to recovery lead to gaps in communication during critical times. The Act with Assurance app provides recovery teams the ability to interact live through a new communication channel, which is absolutely essential to effective incident recovery.”
Act with Assurance real-time messaging capabilities allow incident coordinators to stage task assignments and monitor up-to-the minute task progress, streamlining communications during an event. Responders see their customized task lists at a glance, allowing them to stay focused and problem-solve, and they can provide updates with minimal interruptions by tapping their smart phone screen. Updates then feed back to the Command Center in Assurance, bringing teams together at just the right time by facilitating better communication while recovering.
“Apps for other business continuity software are merely portals to the existing sites with no additional functionality. Act with Assurance is a native app developed as a powerful extension of Assurance’s incident management solution, building on the business continuity data our customers are gathering with Assurance,” Marquardt continued. “Other business continuity software companies are focused on planning. We see a significant need in business continuity to evolve from plan building to plan execution. And we believe this app is a major step in getting there.”
