EMC today announced a new set of services designed to assist companies in managing their disaster-recovery and business continuity plans. The new services, offered by EMC Global Services under the name Managed Availability Services, are targeted at improving recovery times and reducing data loss in the wake of outages.

The new services provide multi-year business continuity program support aimed at improving service levels. As part of the services, a dedicated EMC program manager works at the customer site to recommend, implement, and manage a business continuity program matched to a customer's business requirements.

Prime candidates for the services are organizations with limited business continuity staff expertise, according to EMC officials. Tom Roloff, senior vice president of Consulting and Solutions Integration Services for EMC Global Services, says many organizations are coming to the realization that their existing business continuity programs are inadequate.

"With increasing business demands for improved data availability and recovery for their growing information infrastructures, these challenges will continue to increase and outpace the ability of many organizations to address them on their own," says Roloff.

The Managed Availability Services comprise tools and training materials compiled from the best practices of EMC's existing customers, monthly status reports and detailed quarterly progress updates, and periodic briefings on industry trends and new technologies related to long-term disaster recovery. EMC also steps in to take on the responsibility of managing the IT suppliers and internal stakeholders involved in the customer's disaster-recovery solution to "reduce management complexity."