CCH Hosted Services has won the Southern Hemisphere distribution rights to SunGard's PreCovery Business Continuity software. This software offers business continuity clients cost-effective consulting and a total solution on their data recovery plans.

SunGard's PreCovery provides clients with complete business continuity reassurance, along with consultation, expertise and features covering all aspects of disaster prevention, impact analysis, planning, disaster recovery plan audits, recovery testing and resumption of normal business activities in the event of an actual disaster.

Frederick Castleman, Director of CCH Hosted Services, says that "When a business embarks on a business continuity programme, the upfront costs can be significant. SunGard's PreCovery business continuity software reduces this cost by augmenting and assisting existing in-house resources.

"Previously consultants have had to engage a company for a prolonged period to evaluate their needs. Now they can apply PreCovery, quickly evaluate the business recovery plan and cut down the plan conceptualisation time to under a month. This is cost-effective for the client and allows us to streamline evaluation by adopting all plans on one software package," Castleman adds.

US-based SunGard Planning Solutions is one of the world's largest business continuity providers, allowing CCH to offer customers international standards, advanced technology and increased infrastructure stability. The newly signed distributorship deal sees CCH Hosted Services appointed as the sole SunGard distributor in the Southern Hemisphere.

Castleman continues: "Disaster recovery has traditionally been offered with vendor software-specific continuity. CCH Hosted Services is the first independent business continuity service running various telecommunications, IT and support packages. Using SunGard as a basis for all customer business plans allows for reduced consulting costs, faster time to completion and the ability to leverage the system's knowledge base. Programming is more efficient through SunGard's fully integrated business impact analysis planning tool and enhanced database flexibility."

Karen Falcone, Director of Business Development, SunGard Planning Solutions US, adds, "PreCovery enables CCH Hosted Services to provide a total solution to its business recovery services customers. CCH's customers will be able to develop a comprehensive business continuity plan for the data centre as well as the entire business. We are keen to work with CCH Hosted Services as we see much opportunity in the region for the marketing and selling of this strategic tool."

Castleman says CCH Hosted Services is the largest commercial provider of business continuity services across all major computer architectures in the Southern Hemisphere.

"Our facilities can accommodate a vast range of mainframe and midrange platforms and specialise in complex recovery work such as treasury operations and call centres," he adds.

For details contact CCH Hosted Services, (011) 808 3200, fax: (011) 808 3201.