SunGard has created a global services organization of approximately 4,500, bringing together its consulting and technology services teams. The new business is one of the leading consultancies focused primarily on the global financial services and energy industries. Mack Gill, previously president of SunGard Technology Services, has been named president of SunGard Global Services.

Financial organizations are investing in technology that can help them drive revenue growth, cost savings, and regulatory compliance. SunGard combines technology know-how with deep process knowledge, domain and regulatory expertise across financial services to help them achieve these goals. SunGard Global Services helps customers streamline their vendor relationships, as it builds, tests, integrates and hosts SunGard and third party solutions. SunGard Global Services also delivers expertise in SunGard and third party Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)*, service-oriented architecture and business process management technologies, to help customers increase operational efficiency and, in a cost-conscious economic environment, adjust their budget and payment models to better align spend with revenue.

SunGard Global Services operates out of 25 global financial and technology centers including Bangalore, Dublin, Houston, London, New York, Paris, Pune, Shanghai, Sydney and Tunis. To help customers in Asia manage their growing infrastructure and technology needs, SunGard Global Services is also launching a new consulting services practice, based in Singapore.

Jeanne Capachin, research vice president, global banking for IDC Financial Insights, said, “With this organizational realignment, SunGard is responding to the needs of its financial institution customers and capitalizing on its expertise in technology consulting. Particularly in this time of regulatory change, financial institutions require a broad global footprint and they are looking for services providers with expertise in BPM and SaaS so they can prepare for what comes next.”

“It is very important for us that a technology partner is able to provide not just the right software, but also the right services and support” said Vivian Schneck-Last, managing director at Goldman Sachs. “SunGard’s global services offering will have the ability to provide three key elements: global scope and reach, local knowledge and understanding, and, most importantly, a team that can provide both financial services and technology expertise.”

Her comments were echoed by Francis Cox, general manager, IT and operational capability, at Sunsuper, one of Australia’s biggest super funds, who said, “This move allows us to more easily leverage the deep industry expertise and latest technologies that SunGard has to offer. Our investment in SunGard’s global services is expected to pay off in increased efficiencies and ultimately reduced operational costs.”

Mack Gill, president of SunGard Global Services, said, “Creating a 4,500 person- strong organization means that we are one of the largest financial technology services providers in the industry. By combining our services resources we are able to offer our customers quick and easy access to what is one of the world’s deepest pools of talent in mission-critical financial applications. We are able to connect the right people and the right technology wherever and whenever it’s needed to help accelerate time to market for our customers, because we understand the financial industry’s business processes and best practices.”

* SunGard Financial Systems is pursuing a visionary initiative to transform some of the key functionality of its core systems into components to form a new software development and on-demand delivery environment called Infinity. Infinity helps financial institutions to develop and deploy custom applications, integrating SunGard components with their own proprietary or third party components. Infinity uses SunGard’s Common Services Architecture (CSA), a service-oriented architecture (SOA) development framework, offering business process management (BPM) and a virtualized, software-as-a-service (SaaS) infrastructure.