Demonstrating an aggressive commitment to sustainability and green technology practices, SunGard Availability Services has created the Responsible Computing Project, a project designed to harness the spare processing capabilities of idle SunGard workstations held in reserve for disaster recovery and utilize them for scientific and humanitarian research projects.

The SunGard Responsible Computing Project encompasses three of SunGard's largest data center facilities in Philadelphia, New York and Chicago.  The project leverages more than 1,000 workstations within these data centers that are used periodically for customer recovery testing and also as alternative work spaces during times of disaster.  These workstations have been aggregated into formidable computing grids and are connected via the internet and provide unused central processing units (CPUs) to several volunteer research projects, including:

World Community Grid.  World Community Grid is making technology available to public and not-for-profit organizations to use in humanitarian research efforts.  SunGard is currently ranked in the top 50 worldwide providers for total CPU credits for the World Community Grid.

Docking@Home.  Docking@Home uses volunteer CPUs to perform scientific calculations that aid in the creation of new and improved medicines.  The project aims to help cure diseases such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). SunGard is currently the number one contributor of total CPU credits for this project worldwide.

PrimeGrid.  PrimeGrid is a project dedicated to the discovery of prime numbers, as well as providing relevant educational materials about prime numbers.  SunGard is currently the number one contributor of total CPU credits for this project worldwide.

Einstein@Home.  The Einstein@Home research project uses idle computing time to search for spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) and radio pulsars in binary systems.  SunGard is currently ranked in the top 50 world-wide providers for total CPU credits for the Einstein@Home project.

The SunGard Responsible Computing Project is facilitated via the University of California Berkeley's Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform, a free software structure available to any individual or organization wishing to participate in volunteer computing projects.  Most BOINC projects are nonprofit and rely heavily, if not completely, on volunteers.

Over the last six months, SunGard's overall contributions have ranked in the top 15 for recent achieved credits (RAC) and as high as 34 out of 1.7 million participants based on contributions.  Locally, SunGard has actively supported Docking@Home, sponsored in part by the University of Delaware, and has maintained a number one ranking over the last six months out of 9,440 participants.

In order to provide workgroup resiliency to its more than 10,000 customers worldwide, SunGard maintains thousands of the latest computer workstations in a ready state.  When SunGard's data center workstations are needed for customer testing purposes or in times of a disaster, the Responsible Computing Project allows volunteer jobs to be immediately suspended. The workstation is then automatically converted to its customer's desktop image, with no impact to either the volunteer project or the customers' recovery objectives.  When the workstations are no longer in use, the volunteer computing projects will resume automatically.

"At SunGard Availability Services, sustainability, protection and vigilance are key components of our culture and business promise," said Steve Buckus, vice president, operations, recovery services at SunGard Availability Services.  "The Responsible Computing Project exemplifies SunGard's commitment to harnessing our available resources to address scientific problems, aid in humanitarian efforts and benefit the greater good."