Software and technology services company SunGard's cloud computing division, SunGard Availability Services, is partnering up with good ole Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide its customers with highly available cloud backup via Amazon Direct Connect for both AWS and SunGard customers in 2012.

Initially, SunGard Availability will provide LAN-like connectivity from AWS's U.S. East Coast data centers by leveraging Direct Connect so that the company can provide customers with bi-directional disaster recovery services from both cloud service providers without having to transfer data over the publically used Internet.

SunGard customers will also be able to use Amazon S3's Storage Gateway to write customer data bi-directionally and asynchronously between the SunGard Enterprise Cloud and AWS's storage infrastructure, ultimately providing customers' data with an additional layer of protection.

And that's not all; SunGard will also use AWS to offer customers a broader set of cloud solutions for production and testing/development environments, which means users will be able to select from a series of different cloud platforms based on the needs of their applications.