SunGard Availability Services Reviews in Philadelphia, PA Area

Pros

Supporting customers from all industries gives you the opportunity to learn about many businesses.

Cons

Poor leadership communication and opportunities for minorities to advance.

Pros

Great place to learn and train on different technologies. co-workers and first line of management are great to work with.

Cons

No stability right now and really nned to think before decisions are made.

Advice to Senior Management

Need stability and a a direct path to where we are going.

Pros

Hopefully trying to turn around the company and provide new offerings to the market

Cons

Management turnover = constant change in direction. New CEO has a decent vision but it's proving challenging to get momentum to make changes to culture. You can't post new company values on a bulletin board and expect the company to embrace...you have to lead by example.

Pros

The pay and benefits are decent compaired to other companies in the area
work life balance decent in some departments

Cons

there is no communication, positive or negative, within the organzaition.
Everything is treated as confidential and there is no confidence in where the company is going

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate to your teams and get the on board with where the company is going.
Be more open so that employees are proud of what the company does.

Pros

Some great people to work with, what was left of them. Felt like I was making a positive influence on customer relations. Great benefits and very flexible with working from home.

Cons

Wow way to many VP, directors, Senior Directors, not enough non managment to do the work. The retention dept was gutted on the East Coast, I found out from India that my job was eliminated when I couldn't log onto my email. Very poor communications, after hearing ra ra speaches how customer service was going to be revamped to prevent churn they lay off more than half of the retention dept on the east coast. Getting anything done internally for a customer was horrible, there are not enough people (engineers) to do the work.

Advice to Senior Management

If you are going to lay someone off, at least have the decency to not have IT in India tell you to call HR. Stop hiring these VP, Directors who say they are going to change retention and stop customer churn, only to eliminate your job, how can you eliminate churn when there isn't anyone looking out for the customer interest get rid of these VP types and higher engineers and retention folks.

Pros

They dominate the DR industry , and are experts at what they do. You can learn a lot from coworkers, before they get laid-off.

Cons

Sungard was a great place to work. They were successfull, employee oriented and nearly lay-off proof. They were bought out by a consortium of shady characters that wish to remain anonymous and the change is dramatic. Their management style is to lay off half the staff and work the rest to death. Avoid Sungard at all costs.

Advice to Senior Management

Advising management is an exercise in futility. They know what they're doing. They will flip the company when the time is right. By then, the company will be a wreck and the new management will be stuck with customers who have caught on to the scam and empoyees who will bail out as soon as the economy improves.

Pros

Good product capabilities...ie the possibility is there. A lot of datacenters with a good geographic spread throughout the US. Good employees, many with a really good work ethic. Good brand name...most people in IT know who SunGard is. Technology upgrades slowly in process. Good opportunity for hands on, learn as you go training.

Cons

Little or no strategy. Very challenged in our ability to do our jobs.. Everything is a headless chicken. It's always the fire of the moment instead of trying to head off the fires. Backstabbing at the senior management levels. Always a political power play. Much of the technology is old and outdated, although it's slowly being replaced and that's a good thing for my technical skills. Never seems to be enough people that actually do the work.

Advice to Senior Management

Get strategic and stop being tactical every single day. Understand your customers and what their businesses do, and understand what a regular ol' IT department actually does. Get out of the sales mode and into delivery mode. Quit focusing on the power struggle at the senior management (below Conde) levels and stop making excuses and blaming everyone else. Actually KEEP the good senior management you hire.

Pros

Compared to what I hear from friends, the benefits are pretty good here. Co-workers are some of the best people I know.

Cons

While the horizontal relationships are quite good, there may be a need for upper management to better communicate with the lower levels.

Advice to Senior Management

I would suggest to management that they identify those workers who contribute positively to the organization and develop those relationships.

Pros

Great coworkers, casual atmosphere, decent working conditions, above average benefits overall.

Cons

Senior management in place prior to acquisition by SunGard AS has not changed. Reviews under Strohl Systems still apply. Senior management has a history of:
- Missed release dates
- Quality issues in releases
- Hiring ineffective managers who are either apathetic or manage by intimidation
- Shifting priorities with no long term strategy
- Blaming former employees for mistakes
- Blaming employees for low morale and failure to execute
- Discouraging employees from expressing their opinion by labeling them negative and not team players
- Unwillingness to invest in people or tools

Acquisition by SunGard AS has not improved the situation. Reasons:
- Harder to perform job due to IT policies and practices
- Layers of management
- No expertise in software products
- Most importantly, the Application Software division is not a major contributor to the bottom line and has no visibility in the organization.

Advice to Senior Management

SunGard AS needs to:
- Decide if they want to be in the software business
- If so, take a long hard look at Senior Management in the Application Software division and ask pointed questions starting with "What's your strategy?".

Pros

Good place to learn, but not stay

Cons

SunGard has been losing all of their traditional disaster recovery customers at an alarming rate. SunGard has been very slow to make the turn to Cloud based services. SunGard management doesn't have a clue. Management use to be excellent, but after the departure of Jim Simmons a number of years ago.....it went down hill rapidly. I wouldn't recommend that anybody take a job at SunGard unless you are a college student who just needs a place to land to cut your teeth.

Advice to Senior Management

Sell Availability Services.