Bell Atlantic offers disaster recovery

Bell Atlantic Federal Systems last week launched a service to help agencies with disaster recovery planning for their data and communications networks.

Bell Atlantic's CommGuard will cover a range of disaster recovery offerings from risk assessment to integrated disaster recovery solutions. The company has formed alliances with a number of vendors to provide various disaster recovery components. Those companies include American Power Conversion Corp. (uninterruptable power supplies) Comdisco Inc. (hot and alternate recovery sites) Octel (voice messag-ing and back-up systems) RiskWatch Inc. (security risk analysis) SEI (power engineering) SpectraLink (campus/building wireless systems) and Teloquent (distributed call center solutions).

CommGuard products and services are available through Bell Atlantic contract vehicles including the Defense Department's Telecommunications Modernization Project the General Services Administration's Washington Interagency Telecommunications System and the GSA schedule. CommGuard also is available through the National Institutes of Health's Chief Information Officer Solutions and Partners program on which Bell Atlantic is a subcontractor to Computer Sciences Corp. The service's World Wide Web site is www.bell-atl.com/commguard.

Mike Braham director of CommGuard Services Bell Atlantic said his company has been offering recovery services for networks. He added that the company's alliances allow Bell Atlantic to cover data centers and networks. "We're looking at the whole thing " he said.

He said Bell Atlantic is planning to participate in GSA's Computer and Communications Recovery Services pact. He said the company would bid as a team member rather than a prime contractor. GSA's Federal Systems Integration Management Center released a draft request for proposals for the disaster recovery pact earlier this year [FCW March 10]